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YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 




HILDA 

in her motor-ambulance uniform wearing the "Order of 
Leopold II," conferred on her by King Albert in person. 



YOUNG HILDA 
AT THE WARS 



BY 



Jfr* 



ARTHUR H. GLEASON 

AUTHOR OF "THE SPIRIT 'OF CHRISTMAS" 
" LOVE, HOME AND THE INNER LIFE," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



-p. 



4,*° 



i 



to 



Copyright, 1915, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



All rights reserved, including that of translation 
into foreign languages 




September, 1915 



] 



m "2 1915 

*>CLA411781 
1* -v . 



TO 
CHEVALIER HELEN OF PERVYSE 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Experience (by way of Preface) . . 1 

I. Young Hilda at the Wars . . 5 

Goodwill 37 

II. The Ribbons that Stuck in His 

Coat 39 

The Belgian Refugee .... 59 

III. Rollo, the Apollo 63 

The Brotherhood of Man ... 91 

IV. The Piano of Pervtse .... 93 

Lost 113 

V. War 115 

In Ramskappele Barnyard . . 141 

VI. The Chevalier 143 

With the Ambulance .... 163 

VII. The American 165 

The Bonfire 189 

VIII. The War Baby 191 




EXPERIENCE 

{By way of Preface) 

F these sketches that tell of ruined 
Belgium, I must say that I saw 
what I have told of. They are 
not meditations in a library. Because 
of the great courtesy of the Prime Min- 
ister of Belgium, who is the war minister, 
and through the daily companionship 
of his son, our little group of helpers 
were permitted to go where no one else 
could go, to pass in under shell fire, to 
see action, to lift the wounded out of the 
muddy siding where they had fallen. 
Ten weeks of Red Cross work showed 
me those faces and torn bodies which 
I have described. The only details that 
have been altered for the purpose of story- 
telling are these: The Doctor who rescued 
the thirty aged at Dixmude is still alive; 
Smith did not receive the decoration, but 



% YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

Hilda did; it was a candlestick on the piano 
of Pervyse that vibrated to shell fire; 
the spy continues to signal without being 
caught; "Pervyse," the war-baby, was not 
adopted by an American financier; motor 
ambulances were given to the Corps, not to 
an individual. With these exceptions, the 
incidents are lifted over from the experience 
of two English women and my wife in 
Pervyse, and my own weeks as stretcher- 
bearer on an ambulance. 

In that deadlock of slaughter where I 
worked, I saw no pageantry of war, no 
glitter and pomp, at all. Nothing re- 
mains to me of war pictures except the 
bleakness. When I think suddenly of 
Belgium, I see a town heavy with the 
coming horror : — almost all the houses 
sealed, the curtains drawn, the friendly 
door barred. And then I see a town after 
the invaders have shelled it and burned 
it, with the homeless dogs howling in the 
streets, and the pigeons circling in search 
of their cote, but not finding it. Or I 



EXPERIENCE 3 

look down a long, lonely road, gutted 
with shell holes, with dead cattle in the 
fields, and farm-houses in a heap of 
broken bricks and dust. 

And when I do not see a landscape, 
dreary with its creeping ruin, I see men 
in pain. Sometimes I see the faces of 
dead boys — one boy outstretched at 
length on a doorstep with the smoke 
of his burning body rising through the 
mesh of his blue army clothing; and then 
a half mile beyond, in the yard of a farm- 
house, a young peasant spread out as 
he had fallen when the chance bullet 
found him. 

That alone which seemed good in the 
horror was the courage of the modern man. 
He dies as simply and as bravely as the 
young of Thermopylae. These men of the 
factory and office are crowding more mean- 
ing into their brief weeks by the Yser and 
under the shattering of Ypres than is con- 
tained in all the last half century of clerk 
routine. 




I 

YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

HE was an American girl from that 
very energetic and prosperous state 
of Iowa, which if not as yet the 
mother of presidents, is at least the 
parent of many exuberant and useful 
persons. Will power is grown out yonder 
as one of the crops. She had a will of 
her own and her eye showed a blue 
cerulean. Her hair was a bright yellow, 
lighting up a gloomy room. It had 
three shades in it, and you never knew 
ahead of time which shade was going to 
enrich the day, so that an encounter 
with her always carried a surprise. For 
when she arranged that abundance in 
soft nun-like drooping folds along the 
side of the head, the quieter tones were 
in command. And when it was piled 



6 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

coil on coil on the crown, it &dded inches 
to the prairie stature, and it was mellow 
like ripe corn in the sun. But the pretti- 
est of all was at the seashore or on the 
hills, when she unbuckled it from its 
moorings and let it fall in its plenty 
to the waist. Then its changing lights 
came out in a rippling play of color, 
and the winds had their way with it. It 
was then youth's battleflag unfurled, and 
strong men were ready to follow. It was 
such a vivid possession that strangers 
were always suspicious of it, till they 
knew the girl, or saw it in its unshackled 
freedom. She had that wayward quality 
of charm, which visits at random a frail 
creature like Maude Adams, and a burly 
personality, such as that of Mr. Roose- 
velt. It is a pleasant endowment, for 
it leaves nothing for the possessor to 
do in life except to bring it along, in 
order to obtain what he is asking for. 
When it is harnessed to will power, the 
pair of them enjoy a career. 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 7 

So when Hilda arrived in large London 
in September of the great war, there was 
nothing for it but that somehow she must 
go to war. She did not wish to shoot 
anybody, neither a German grocer nor 
a Flemish peasant, for she liked people. 
She had always found them willing to 
make a place for her in whatever was 
going her way. But she did want to 
see what war was like. Her experience 
had always been of the gentler order. 
Canoeing and country walks, and a 
flexible wrist in playing had given her 
only a meagre training for the stresses 
of the modern battlefield. Once she had 
fainted when a favorite aunt had fallen 
from a trolley car. And she had left 
the room when a valued friend had at- 
tacked a stiff loaf of bread with a crust 
that turned the edge of the knife into 
his hand. She had not then made her 
peace with bloodshed and suffering. 

On the Strand, London, there was a 
group of alert professional women, housed 



8 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

in a theatre building, and known as the 
Women's Crisis League. To their office 
she took her way, determined to en- 
list for Belgium. Mrs. Bracher was in 
charge of the office — a woman with a 
stern chin, and an explosive energy, 
that welcomed initiative in newcomers. 

"It's a poor time to get pupils," said 
the fair-haired Hilda, "I don't want to 
go back to the Studio Club in New 
York, as long as there's more doing over 
here. I'm out of funds, but I want to 
work." 

"Are you a trained nurse?" asked 
Mrs. Bracher, who was that, as well 
as a motor cyclist and a woman of 
property, a certificated midwife, and a 
veterinarian. 

"Not even a little bit," replied Hilda, 
"but I'm ready to do dirty work. There 
must be lots to do for an untrained 
person, who is strong and used to rough- 
ing it. I'll catch hold all right, if you'll 
give me the chance." 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 9 

"Right, oh," answered Mrs. Bracher. 
"Dr. Neil McDonnell is shortly leaving 
for Belgium with a motor-ambulance 
Corps," she said, "but he has hundreds 
of applications, and his list is probably 
completed." 

"^ xnk you," said Hilda, "that will 
do\ jely." 

i don't mind telling you," continued 
Mrs. Bracher, "that I shall probably 
go with him to the front. I hope he 
will accept you, but there are many 
ahead of you in applying, and he has 
already promised more than he can 
take." 

Hilda took a taxi from St. Mary Le 
Strand to Harley Street. Dr. Neil Mc- 
Donnell was a dapper mystical little 
specialist, who was renowned for his 
applications of psychotherapy to raging 
militants and weary society leaders. He 
was a Scottish Highlander, with a rare 
gift of intuitive insight. He, too, had 
the agreeable quality of personal charm. 



10 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

Like all to whom the gods have been 
good, he looked with a favoring eye on 
the spectacle of youth. 

"You come from a country which will 
one day produce the choicest race in 
history," he began, "you have a blend of 
nationalities. We have a little corner 
in Scotland where several strains were 
merged, and the men were finer and the 
women fairer than the average. But 
as for going to Belgium, I must tell you 
that we have many more desiring to go 
than we can possibly find room for." 

"That is why I came to you," re- 
sponded Hilda. "That means competi- 
tion, and then you will have to choose 
the youngest and strongest." 

"I can promise you nothing," went on 
the Doctor; "I am afraid it is quite 
impossible. But if you care to do it, 
keep in touch with me for the next 
fortnight. Send me an occasional letter. 
Call me up, if you will." 

She did. She sent him telegrams, 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 11 

letters by the "Boots" in her lodging- 
house. She called upon him. She took 
Mrs. Bracher with her. 

And that was how Hilda came to go 
to Flanders. When the Corps crossed 
from happy unawakened London to for- 
lorn Belgium, they felt lost. How to 
take hold, they did not know. There 
were the cars, and here were the workers, 
but just what do you do? 

Their first weeks were at Ghent, rather 
wild, disheveled weeks of clutching at work. 
They had one objective: the battlefield; one 
purpose: to make a series of rescues under 
fire. Cramped in a placid land, smothered 
by peace-loving folk, they had been set 
quivering by the war. The time had come 
to throw themselves at the Continent, and 
do or die where action was thick. Nothing 
was quainter, even in a land of astounding 
spectacles, than the sight of the rescuing 
ambulances rolling out to the wounded of a 
morning, loaded to the gunwale with charm- 



12 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

ing women and several men. ' Where will 
they put the wounded? ,: was the query- 
that sprang to every lip that gaped at their 
passing. There was room for everybody 
but wounded. Fortunately there were few 
wounded in those early days when rescuers 
tingled for the chance to serve and see. So 
the Ghent experience was a probation rather 
than a fulfilled success. Then the enemy 
descended from fallen Antwerp, and the 
Corps sped away, ahead of the vast gray 
Prussian machine, through Bruges and 
Ostend, to Furnes. Here, too, in Furnes, 
the Corps was still trying to find its place 
in the immense and intricate scheme of war. 
The man that saved them from their 
fogged incertitude was a Belgian doctor, a 
military Red Cross worker. The first flash 
of him was of a small silent man, not 
significant. But when you had been 
with him, you felt reserves of force. 
That small person had a will of his own. 
He was thirty-one years of age, with 
a thoughtful but kindly face. His eye 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 13 

had pleasant lights in it, and a twinkle 
of humor. His voice was low and even- 
toned. He lifted the wounded in from 
the trenches, dressed their wounds, a<nd 
sent them back to the base hospitals. 
He was regimental dentist as well as 
Doctor, and accompanied his men from 
point to point, along the battlefront 
from the sea to the frontier. Van der 
Helde was his name. He called on the 
Corps soon after their arrival in Furnes, 
one of the last bits of Belgian soil un- 
occupied by the invaders. 

"You are wandering about like lost 
souls," he said to them; "let me tell 
you how to get to work." 

He did so. As the results of his 
suggestions, the six motor ambulances 
and four touring cars ran out each morn- 
ing to the long thin line of troops that 
lay burrowed in the wet earth, all the 
way from the Baths of Nieuport-on-the- 
Sea down through the shelled villages 
of the Ramskappele-Dixmude frontier 



14 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

to the beautiful ancient city of Ypres. 
The cars returned with their patient 
freight of wounded through the afternoon 
and evening. 

What had begun as an adventure 
deepened to a grim fight against blood- 
poisoning and long-continuing exposure 
and hunger. Hilda learned to drop 
the antiseptic into open wounds, to ap- 
ply the pad, and roll the cotton. She 
learned to cut away the heavy army 
blue cloth to reach the spurting artery. 
She built the fire that heated the soup. 
She distributed the clean warm socks. 
Doubtless someone else could have done 
the work more skilfully, but the someone 
else was across the water in a comfortable 
country house, or watching the Russian 
dancers at the Coliseum. 

The leader of the Corps, Dr. McDon- 
nell, was an absurdly brave little man. 
His heart may not have been in the 
Highlands, but his mind certainly was, 
for he led his staff into shell fire, week- 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 15 

days and Sundays, and all with a fine 
unconsciousness that anything unusual 
was singing and breaking around the 
path of their performance. He carried 
a pocket edition of the Oxford Book of 
Verse, and in the lulls of slaughter turned 
to the Wordsworth sonnets with a fine 
relish. 

"Something is going to happen. I 
can feel it coming," said Mrs. Bracher 
after one of these excursions into the 
troubled regions. 

"Yes," agreed Hilda, "they are long 
chances we are taking, but we are fools 
for luck." 

A famous war correspondent paid 
them a fleeting visit, before he was or- 
dered twenty miles back to Dunkirk by 
Kitchener. 

"By the law of probabilities," he 
observed to Dr. McDonnell, as he was 
saying good-bye, "you and your staff 
are going to be wiped out, if you keep 
on running your motors into excitement." 



16 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

The Doctor smiled. It was doubtful 
if he heard the man. 

One day, the Doctor got hold of Smith, 
a London boy driver, and Hilda, and 
said: 

"I think we would better visit Dix- 
mude, this morning. It sounds like guns 
in that direction. That means work for 
us. Get your hat, my dear." 

"But I never wear a hat," she said 
with a touch of irritation. 

"Ah, I hadn't noticed," returned the 
Doctor, and he hadn't. Hilda went free 
and fair those days, with uncovered 
head. Where the men went, there went 
she. For the modern woman has put 
aside fear along with the other impedi- 
ments. The Doctor and Hilda, and, 
lastly, Smith, climbed aboard and started 
at fair speed. 

Smith's motor-ambulance was a swift 
machine, canopied by a brown hood, 
the color of a Mediterranean sail, with 
red crosses on the sides to ward off shells, 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 17 

and a huge red cross on the top to 
claim immunity from aeroplanes with 
bombs and plumbed arrows. 

"Make haste, make haste," urged Dr. 
McDonnell, who felt all time was wasted 
that was not spent where the air was 
thick. They had ridden for a half hour. 

"There are limits, sir," replied Smith. 
"If you will look at that piece of road 
ahead, sir, you will see that it's been 
chewed up with Jack Johnsons. It's 
hard on the machine." 

But the Doctor's attention was already 
far away, for he had been seized with 
the beauty of the fresh spring morning. 
There was a tang in the air, and sense 
of awakening life in the ground, which 
not all the bleakness of the wasted farms 
and the dead bodies of cattle could 
obscure for him. 

"Isn't that pretty," he observed, as 
a shrapnel exploded overhead in the blue 
with that ping with which it breaks its 
casing and releases the pattering bullets. 



18 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

It unfolded itself in a little white cloud, 
which hung motionless for an instant 
before the winds of the morning shred- 
ded it. 

To Hilda the sensation of being under 
fire was always exhilarating. The 
thought of personal peril never entered 
her head. The verse of a favorite gypsy 
song often came into her memory these 
days : — 

"I am breath, dew, all resources. 
Laughing in your face, I cry 
Would ye kill me, save your forces. 
Why kill me, who cannot die." 

They swept on to Oudekappele and its 
stout stone church, where lonely in the 
tower, the watcher, leaning earthward, 
told off his observations of the enemy 
to a soldier in the rafters, who passed 
them to another on the ladder, who 
dropped them to another on the stone 
floor, who hurried them to an officer at 
the telephone in the west front, who 
spoke them to a battery one mile away. 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 19 

They took the poplar-lined drive-way 
that leads to the crossroads. They 
turned east, and made for Caeskerke. 
And now Smith let out his engine, for 
it is not wise to delay along a road that 
is in clear sight and range of active 
guns. At Caeskerke station, they 
halted for reports on the situation in 
Dixmude. 

There, they saw their good friend, 
Dr. van der Helde, in the little 
group behind the wooden building of 
the station. 

"I have just come from Dixmude," 
he said; "it is under a fairly heavy 
fire. The Hospital of St. Jean is up 
by the trenches. I have thirty poor old 
people there, who were left in the town 
when the bombardment started. They 
have been under shell fire for four days, 
and their nerves are gone. They are 
paralyzed with fright, and cannot walk. 
I brought them to the hospital from the 
cellars where they were hiding. I have 



20 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

come back here to try to get cars to take 
them to Furnes. Will you help me get 
them?" 

" That's what we're here for," said 
Dr. McDonnell. 

''Thank you," said the Belgian quietly. 
"Shall we not leave the lady?' 2 he 
suggested, turning to Hilda. 

"Try it," she replied with a smile. 

Dr. van der Helde jumped aboard. 

"And you mean to tell me you 
couldn't get hold of an army car to help 
you out, all this time?" asked Dr. 
McDonnell, in amazement. 

"Orders were strict," replied the Bel- 
gian; "the military considered it too 
dangerous to risk an ambulance." 

They had entered the town of Dix- 
mude. Hilda had never seen so thorough 
a piece of ruin. Walls of houses had 
crumbled out upon the street into heaps 
of brick and red dust. Stumps of build- 
ing still stood, blackened down their 
surface, as if lightning had visited them. 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 21 

Wire that had once been telegraph and 
telephone crawled over the piles of wreck- 
age, like a thin blue snake. The car 
grazed a large pig, that had lost its pen 
and trough and was scampering wildly 
at each fresh detonation from the never- 
ceasing guns. 

"It's a bit warm," said Smith, as a 
piece of twisted metal, the size of a 
man's fist, dropped by the front wheel. 

"That is nothing," returned Dr. van 
der Helde. 

They had to slow up three times for 
heaps of ruin that had spread across the 
road. They reached the Hospital. It 
still stood unbroken. It had been a 
convent, till Dr. van der Helde com- 
mandeered it to the reception of his 
cases. He led them to the hall. There 
down the long corridor were seated the 
aged poor of Dixmude. Not one of the 
patient creatures was younger than sev- 
enty. Some looked to be over eighty. 
WTiite-haired men and women, bent over, 



22 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

shaking from head to foot, muttering. 
Most of them looked down at the 
floor. It seemed as if they would con- 
tinue there rooted, like some ancient 
lichen growth in a forest. A few of 
them looked up at the visitors, with eyes 
in which there was little light. No 
glimmer of recognition altered the expres- 
sion of dim horror. 

"Come," said Dr. van der Helde, 
firmly but kindly, "come, old man. We 
are going to take you to a quiet 
place." 

The one whom he touched and 
addressed shook his head and settled 
to the same apathy which held the 
group. 

"Oh, yes," said Dr. van der Helde, 
"you'll be all right." 

He and Smith and Dr. McDonnell 
caught hold of the inert body and lifted 
it to the car. Two old women and 
one more aged man they carried from 
that hall-way of despair to the motor 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 23 

which had been left throbbing under 
power. 

"Will you come back?" asked Dr. 
van der Helde. 

"As soon as we have found a place 
for them," replied Dr. McDonnell. 

The car pulled out of the hospital 
yard and ran uninjured through the 
town. The firing was intermittent, now. 
Two miles back at the cross-roads, four 
army ambulances were drawn up waiting 
for orders. 

"Come on in. The water's fine," cried 
Hilda to the drivers. 

"Comment?" asked one of them. 

"Why don't you go into Dixmude?" 
she explained. "There are twenty-six 
old people in St. Jean there. We've 
got four of them here." 

The drivers received an order of release 
from their commanding officer, and 
streamed into the doomed town and on 
to the yard of the hospital. In two 
hours they had emptied it of its misery. 



24 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

At Oudekappele Hilda found a room in 
the little inn, and made the old people 
comfortable. At noon, Dr. van der 
Helde joined her there, and they had 
luncheon together out of the ample 
stores under the seat of the ambulance. 
Up to this day, Doctor van der Helde 
had always been reserved. But the brisk 
affair had unlocked something in his 
hushed preserves. 

"It is a sight for tired eyes," said the 
gallant doctor, "to see such hair in these 
parts. You bring me a pleasure." 

"I am glad you like it," returned 
Hilda. 

"Oh, it is better than that," retorted 
the Doctor, "I love it. It brings good 
luck, you know. Beautiful hair brings 
good luck." 

"I never heard that," said Hilda. 

That night, for the first time since 
the hidden guns had marked Dixmude 
for their own, the Doctor slept in secur- 
ity ten kilometers back of the trenches. 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 25 

That night a shell struck the empty 
hospital of St. Jean and wrecked it. 

'Well, have you worked out a plan 
to cure this idleness," said Mrs. Bracher, 
thundering into the room, like a charge 
of cavalry. "I've done nothing but cut 
buttons off army coats, all day." 

"Such a day," said Hilda, "yes, we've 
got a plan. We met Dr. van der Helde 
again to-day. He is a brave man, and 
he is very pleasant, too. He has been 
working in Dixmude, but no one is there 
any more, and he wants to start a new 
post. He wants to go to Pervyse, and 
he wishes you and Scotch and me to 
go with him and run a dressing-station 
for the soldiers." 

"Pervyse!" cried Mrs. Bracher. "Why, 
my dear girl, Pervyse is nothing but a 
rubbish heap. They've shot it to pieces. 
There's no one at Pervyse." 

'The soldiers are there," replied Hilda; 
"they come in from the trenches with a 



26 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

finger off or a flesh wound. They are 
full of colds from all the wet weather 
we had last month. They haven't half 
enough to eat. They need warm soup 
and coffee after a night out on duty. 
Oh, there's lots to do. Will you do it?' 
" Certainly," said Mrs. Bracher. " How 
about you, Scotch?" 

Scotch was a charming maiden of the 
same land as Dr. McDonnell. She was 
the silent member of a noisy group, but 
there was none of the active work that 
she missed. 

"Wake up, Scotch," said Hilda, "and 
tell us. Will you go to Pervyse and 
stay? Mrs. Bracher and I are going." 
"Me, too," said Scotch. 
The next day, Dr. van der Helde 
called for them, and they motored the 
seven miles to Pervyse. What Dixmude 
was on a large scale, that was Pervyse 
in small. A once lovely village had 
been made into a black waste. On the 
main streets, not one house had been 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 27 

left un wrecked. They found a roomy 
cellar, under a house that had two walls 
standing. Here they installed themselves 
with sleeping " bags, a soup kitchen, 
and a kit of first-aid-to-the-injured 
apparatus. 

Then began for Hilda the most spir- 
ited days of her life. They had callers 
from all the world at seasons when there 
was quiet in the district. Maxine Elliot, 
Prince Alexander of Teck, Generals, the 
Queen of the Belgians, labor leaders — 
so ran the visiting list. The sorrow that 
was Belgium had become famous, and 
this cellar of loyal women in Pervyse was 
one of the few spots left on Belgium soil 
where work was being done for the little 
hunted field army. 

The days were filled with care of the 
hurt, and food for the hungry, and cloth- 
ing for the dilapidated. And the nights 
— she knew she would not forget those 
nights, when the three of them took turns 
in nursing the wounded men resting on 



28 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

stretchers. The straw would crackle 
as the sleepers turned. The faint 
yellow light from the lantern threw 
shadows on the unconscious faces. And 
she was glad of the smile of the men in 
pain, as they received a little comfort. 
She had never known there was such 
goodness in human nature. Who was 
she ever to be impatient again, when 
these men in extremity could remember 
to thank her. Here in this worst of the 
evils, this horror of war, men were mani- 
festing a humanity, a consideration, at 
a higher level than she felt she had ever 
shown it in happy surroundings in a 
peaceful land. Hilda won the sense, 
which was to be of abiding good to her, 
that at last she had justified her existence. 
She, too, was now helping to continue 
that great tradition of human kindness 
which had made this world a more 
decent place to live in. No one could 
any longer say she was only a poor artist 
in an age of big things. Had not the 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 29 

poor artist, in her own way, served the 
general welfare, quite as effectively, as 
if she had projected a new breakfast 
food, or made a successful marriage. Her 
fingers, which had not gathered much 
gold, had at least been found fit to lessen 
some human misery. In that strength 
she grew confident. 

As the fair spring days came back and 
green began to put out from the fields, 
the soldiers returned to their duty. 

Now the killing became brisk again. 
The cellar ran full with its tally of 
scotched and crippled men. Dr. van 
der Helde was in command of the work. 
He was here and there and everywhere — 
in the trenches at daybreak, and gather- 
ing the harvest of wounded in the fields 
after nightfall. Sometimes he would be 
away for three days on end. He would 
run up and down the lines for seven 
miles, watching the work. The Belgian 
nation was a race of individualists, each 
man merrily minding his own business 



30 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

in his own way. The Belgian army 
was a volunteer informal group of sepa- 
rate individuals. The Doctor was an 
individualist. So the days went by at 
a tense swift stride, stranger than any- 
thing in the story-books. 

One morning the Doctor entered the 
cellar, with a troubled look on his 
face. 

"I am forced to ask you to do some- 
thing," began he, "and yet I hardly have 
the heart to tell you." 

"What can the man be after," queried 
Hilda, "will you be wanting to borrow 
my hair brush to curry the cavalry 
with?" 

"Worse than that," responded he; "I 
must ask you to cut off your beautiful 
hair." 

"My hair," gasped Hilda, darting her 
hand to her head, and giving the locks 
an unconscious pat. 

"Your hair," replied the Doctor. "It 
breaks my heart to make you do it, 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 31 

but there's so much disease floating 
around in the air these days, that it is 
too great a risk for you to live with sick 
men day and night and carry all that 
to gather germs." 

"I see," said Hilda in a subdued 
tone. 

" One thing I will ask, that you give 
me a lock of it," he added quietly. She 
thought he was jesting with his request. 

That afternoon she went to her cellar, 
and took the faithful shears which had 
severed so many bandages, and put 
them pitilessly at work on her crown of 
beauty. The hair fell to the ground in 
rich strands, darker by a little, and 
softer far, than the straw on which it 
rested. Then she gathered it up into 
one of the aged illustrated papers that 
had drifted out to the post from kind 
friends in Furnes. She wrapped it 
tightly inside the double page picture 
of laughing soldiers, celebrating Christ- 
mas in the trenches. And she carried 



32 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

it outside behind the black stump of a 
house which they called their home, and 
threw it on the cans that had once 
contained bully-beef. She was a little 
heart-sick at her loss, but she had no 
vanity. As she was stepping inside, the 
Doctor came down the road. 

He stopped at sight of her. 

"Oh, I am sorry," he said. 

"I don't care," she answered, and 
braved it off by a little flaunt of her 
head, though there was a film over her 
eyes. 

"And did you keep a lock for me?' ! 
he asked. 

"You are joking," she replied. 

"I was never more serious," he re- 
turned. She shook her head, and went 
down into the cellar. The Doctor 
walked around to the rear of the house. 

A few minutes later, he entered the 
cellar. 

"Good-bye," he said, holding out his 
hand, "I'm going up the line to Nieu- 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 33 

port. I'll be back in the morning." He 
turned to climb the steps, and then 
paused a moment. 

"Beautiful hair brings good luck," he 
said. 

"Then my luck's gone," returned 
Hilda. 

"But mine hasn't," he answered. 

"Let us go up the road this morning," 
suggested Mrs. Bracher, next day, "and 
see how the new men are getting on." 

There was a line of trenches to the 
north, where reinforcements had just 
come in, all their old friends having been 
ordered back to Furnes for a rest. 

"How loud the shells are, this morn- 
ing," said Hilda. There were whole days 
when she did not notice them, so accus- 
tomed the senses grow to a repetition. 

'Yes, they're giving us special treat- 
ment just now," replied Mrs. Bracher; 
"it's that six-inch gun over behind 
the farm-house, trying out these new 



34 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

men. They're gradually getting ready 
to come across. It will only be a few 
days now." 

They walked up the road a hundred 
yards, and came on a knot of sol- 
diers stooping low behind the roadside 
bank. 

"What are those men looking at?' 3 
exclaimed Mrs. Bracher sharply. 

"Some poor fellow. Probably work 
for us," returned Hilda. 

Mrs. Bracher went nearer, peered at 
the outstretched form on the grass bank, 
then turned her head away suddenly. 

"No work for us," she said. "Don't 
go near, child. It's too horrible. His 
face is gone. A shell must have taken it 
away. Oh, I'm sick of this war. I am 
sick of these sights." 

One of the little group of men about 
the body had drawn near to her. 

"What do you want?" she asked 
crossly, as a woman will who is inter- 
rupted when she is close to tears. 



YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 35 

"Will I identify him?" she repeated 
after him. "I tell you I never saw the 
man." 

A little gasp of amazement came from 
the soldiers about the body. 

"See what we have found," called one 
of the men — "in his pocket." 

It was a lock of the very lightest and 
gayest of hair. 

"Ah, my doctor," Hilda cried. 

She spread the lock across the breast 
of the dead man. It was so vivid in the 
morning sun as to seem almost a living 
thing. 

"And he said it would bring him luck," 
she murmured. 



GOOD WILL 

I looked into the face of my brother. 
There was no face there, only a red interior. 
This thing had been done to my brother, the 
Belgian, by my brother, the German. He 
had sent a splinter of shell through five miles 
of sunlight, hoping it would do some such 
thing as this. 



II 

THE RIBBONS THAT STUCK IN 
HIS COAT 



^HE little group was gathered in 
the cellar of Pervyse. An occa- 
sional shell was heard in the 
middle distance, as artillery beyond the 
Yser threw a lazy feeler over to the rail- 
way station. The three women were 
entertaining a distinguished guest at the 
evening meal of tinned rabbit and dates. 
Their visitor was none other than F. 
Ainslie-Barkleigh, the famous English 
war-correspondent. He was dressed for 
the part. He wore high top-boots, whose 
red leather shone richly even in the dim 
yellow of the lantern that lit them to 
their feast. About his neck was swung 
a heavy black strap from which hung 
a pair of very elegant field-glasses, ready 
for service at a moment's call. He could 



40 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

sweep a battle-field with them, or expose 
a hidden battery, or rake a road. From 
the belt that made his jacket shapely 
about his person, there depended a map 
of the district, with heavy inked red 
lines for the position of friend or foe. 
He was a tall man, with an immense 
head, on which were stuck, like after- 
thoughts, very tiny features — a nose 
easily overlooked, a thin slit of a mouth, 
and small inset eyes. All the upper part 
of him was overhanging and alarming, 
till you chanced on those diminutive 
features. It was as if his growth had 
been terminated before it reached the 
expressive parts. He had an elaborate 
manner — a reticence, a drawl, and a 
chronic irony. Across half of his chest 
there streaked a rainbow of color; gay 
little ribbons of decoration, orange and 
crimson and purple and white. 

Mrs. Bracher, sturdy, iron- jawed, and 
Scotch, her pretty young assistant, sat 
opposite him at table. Hilda did the 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 41 

honors by sitting next him, and passing 
him tins of provender, as required. 

'What pretty ribbons you wear," said 
Hilda. "Where did you get them?" 

"Oh, different wars," returned Bark- 
leigh carelessly. 

"That's modest, but it's vague," urged 
Hilda. "If I had such pretty ribbons, 
I should have the case letter and the 
exhibit number printed on each. Now 
this one, for instance. What happened 
to set this fluttering?" 

"Oh, that one," he, said, nearly twist- 
ing his eyes out of their sockets to see 
which one her fingers had lighted on. 
'That's one the Japs gave me." 

'Thank you for not calling them the 
little brown people," returned Hilda; 
"that alone would merit decoration at 
their hands. And this gay thing, what 
principality gave you this?" 

'That came from somewhere in the 
Balkans. I always did get those states 
muddled up." 



42 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"Incredible haziness," responded Hilda. 
"You probably know the exact hour 
when the King and his Chief of Staff 
called you but on the Town-hall steps. 
You must either be a very brave man 
or else write very nice articles about the 
ruling powers." 

"The latter, of course," returned he, 
a little nettled. 

"Vain as a peacock," whispered Scotch 
to the ever-watchful Mrs. Bracher. 

"I don't understand you women," 
said Ainslie-Barkleigh, clearing his throat 
for action. But Hilda was too quick for 
him. 

"I know you don't," she cut in, "and 
that is no fault in you. But what you 
really mean is that you don't like us, 
and that, I submit, is your own fault." 

"But let me explain," urged he. 

"Go ahead," said Hilda. 

"Well, what I mean is this," he ex- 
plained. "Here I find you three women 
out at the very edge of the battle-front. 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 43 

Here you are in a cellar, sleeping in 
bags on the straw, living on bully-beef 
and canned stuff. Now, you could just 
as well be twenty miles back, nursing in 
a hospital." 

"Is there any shortage of nurses for 
the hospitals?" interposed Hilda. "When 
I went to the Red Cross at Pall Mall in 
London, they had over three thousand 
nurses on the waiting list." 

" That's true enough," assented Bark- 
leigh. "But what I mean is, this is 
reckless; you are in danger, without 
really knowing it." 

"So are the men in danger," returned 
Hilda. "The soldiers come in here, hun- 
gry, and we have hot soup for them. 
They come from the trenches, with a 
gunshot wound in the hand, or a piece 
of shell in a leg, and we fix them up. 
That's better than travelling seven or 
eight miles before getting attention. 
Why it was only a week ago that Mrs. 
Bracher here — " 



44 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"Now none of that," broke in the 
nurse sternly. 

"Hush," said Hilda, "it isn't polite 
to interrupt when a gentleman is asking 
for information." 

She turned back to the correspon- 
dent. 

"Last week," she took up her story, 
"a young Belgian private came in here 
with his lower lip swollen out to twice 
its proper size. It had got gangrene 
in it. A silly old military doctor had 
clapped a treatment over it, when the 
wound was fresh and dirty, without first 
cleaning it out. Mrs. Bracher treated it 
every two hours for six days. The boy 
used to come right in here from the 
trenches. And would you believe it, 
that lip is looking almost right. If it 
hadn't been for her, he would have been 
disfigured for life." 

"Very good," admitted the correspon- 
dent, "but it doesn't quite satisfy me. 
Wait till you get some real hot shell 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 45 

fire out here, then you'll make for your 
happy home." 

"Why," began Scotch, rising slowly 
but powerfully to utterance. 

"It's all right, Scotch," interposed 
Hilda, at a gallop, "save the surprise. 
It will keep." 

Scotch subsided into a rich silence. 
She somehow never quite got into the con- 
versation, though she was always in the 
action. She was one of those silent, com- 
fortable persons, without whom no group 
is complete. Into her ample placidity 
fell the high-pitched clamor of noisier 
people, like pebbles into a mountain 
lake. 

"Now, what do you women think 
you are doing?" persisted the corre- 
spondent. "Why are you here?" 

"You really want to know?" queried 
Hilda. 

"I really want to know," he repeated. 

"I'll answer you to-morrow," said 
Hilda. "Come out here to-morrow after- 



46 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

noon and we'll go to Nieuport. We 
promised to go over and visit the dress- 
ing-station there, and on the way I'll 
tell you why we are here." 

Next day was grey and chilly. A low 
rumble came out of the north. The 
women had a busy morning, for the 
night had been full of snipers perched on 
trees. The faithful three spread aseptics 
and bandaged and sewed, and generally 
cheered the stream of callers from the 
Ninth and Twelfth Regiments, Army 
of the King of the Belgians. In the 
early afternoon, the buzz of motors pene- 
trated to the stuffy cellar, and it needed 
no yelping horn, squeezed by the firm 
hand of Smith, to bring Hilda to the 
surface, alert for the expedition. Two 
motor ambulances were puffing their 
lungs out, in the roadway. Pale-faced 
Smith sat in one at the steering-gear — 
Smith, the slight London boy who would 
drive a car anywhere. Beside him sat 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 47 

F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, bent over upon his 
war map, studying the afternoon's cam- 
paign. In the second ambulance were 
Tom, the Cockney driver, and the leader 
of the Ambulance Corps, Dr. Neil Mc- 
Donnell. 

"Jump in," called he, "we're off for 
Nieuport." 

She jumped into the first ambulance, 
and they turned to the north and took 
the straight road that leads all the way 
from Dixmude to the sea. Barkleigh 
was much too busy with his glasses 
and his map to give her any of his atten- 
tion for the first quarter hour. They 
speeded by sentinel after sentinel, who 
smiled and murmured, "Les Anglais." 
Corporals, captains, commandants, gazed 
in amazement and awe at the mas- 
sive figure of the war -correspondent, 
as he challenged the horizon with his 
binoculars and then dipped to his map 
for consultation. Only once did the 
party have to yield up the pass-word, 



48 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

which for that afternoon was "Charleroi." 
Finally Barkleigh turned to the girl. 

"We had a discussion last evening," 
he began, "and you promised to answer 
my question. Why are you out here? 
Why isn't a hospital good enough for 
you, back in Furnes or Dunkirk?" 

"I remember," returned Hilda. "I'll 
tell you. I could answer you by saying 
that we're out to help, and that would 
be true, too. But it wouldn't be quite 
the whole truth, for there's a tang of 
adventure in Pervyse, where we can see 
the outposts of the other fellows, that 
there isn't in the Carnegie Library in 
Pittsburg, let us say. Yes, we're out to 
help. But we're out for another reason, 
too. For generations now, you men 
have had a monopoly of physical courage. 
You have faced storms at sea, and 
charged up hills, and pulled out drowning 
children, and footed it up fire-ladders, 
till you think that bravery is a male 
characteristic. You've always handed 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 49 

out the passive suffering act to us. We 
had any amount of compliments as long 
as we stuck to silent suffering. But now 
we want to see what shells look like. 
As long as sons and brothers have to 
stand up to them, why, we're going to 
be there, too." 

"But you haven't been in the thick 

of it," objected Barkleigh. When 

the danger is so close you can see it, 

a woman's nerve isn't as good as a man's. 

It can't be. She isn't built that way." 

"That's the very point," retorted 
Hilda, "we're going to show you." 

"Damn quick," muttered Smith. 

In the pleasant heat of their discussion, 
they hadn't been noticing the roadway. 
It was full of soldiers, trudging south. 
The rumble had become a series of 
reports. The look of the peaceful day 
was changing. Barkleigh turned from 
his concentration on the girl, and glanced 
up the road. 

"These troops are all turning," he said. 



50 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"You are right," Hilda admitted. 

"Can't you see," he urged, "they're 
all marching back. That means they've 
given the place up." 

"Oh, hardly that," corrected Hilda; 
"it simply means that Nieuport is hot 
for the present moment." 

"You're not going in?" continued 
Barkleigh. "It is foolish to go into the 
town, when the troops are coming out 
of it." 

"True enough," assented Hilda, "but 
it's a curious fact that the wounded can't 
retreat as fast as the other men, so I'm 
afraid we shall have to look them up. 
Of course, it would be a lot pleasanter 
if they could come to meet us half-way." 

Smith let out his motor, and turned up 
his coat collar, a habit of his when he 
anticipated a breezy time. They 
pounded down the road, and into the 
choice old town. 

They had chanced on the afternoon 
when the enemy's guns were reducing it 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 51 

from an inhabited place into a rubbish 
heap. They could not well have chosen 
a brisker hour for the promised visit. 
The shells were coming in three and four 
to the minute. There was a sound of 
falling masonry. The blur of red brick- 
dust in the air, and the fires from a half 
dozen blazing houses, filled the eyes 
with hot prickles. The street was a 
mess over which the motor veered and 
tossed like a careening boat in a heavy 
seawash. In the other car, their leader, 
brave, perky little Dr. McDonnell, sat 
with his blue eyes dreaming away at the 
ruin in front of him. The man was a 
mystic and burrowed down into his 
sub-consciousness when under fire. This 
made him calm, slow, and very absent- 
minded, during the moments when he 
passed in under the guns. 

They steamed up to the big yellow 
Hotel de Ville. This was the target of 
the concentrated artillery fire, for here 
troops had been sheltering. Here, too, 



52 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

in the cellar, was the dressing-station for 
the wounded. A small, spent, but accu- 
rately directed obus, came in a parabola 
from over behind the roofs, and floated 
by the ambulance and thudded against 
the yellow brick of the stately hall. 

"Ah, it's got whiskers on it," shouted 
Hilda in glee. "I didn't know they got 
tired like that, and came so slow you 
could see them, did you, Mr. Barkleigh?' 5 

"No, no, of course not," he muttered, 
"they don't. What's that?" 

The clear, cold tinkle of breaking and 
spilling glass had seized his attention. 
The sound came out from the Hotel de 
Ville. 

"The window had a pane," said Hilda. 

"The town is doomed," said Barkleigh. 

"Can't we get out of this?" he in- 
sisted. "This is no place to be." 

"No place for a woman, is it?" laughed 
Hilda. 

"Don't let me keep you," she added 
politely, "if you feel you must go." 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 53 

"Listen," said the war-correspondent. 
About a stone's throw to their left, a 
wall was crumpling up. 

Dr. McDonnell had slowly crawled 
down from his perch on the ambulance. 
His legs were stiff from the long ride, so 
he carefully shook them one after the 
other, and spoke pleasantly to a dog 
that was wandering about the Grand 
Place in a forlorn panic. Then he re- 
membered why he had come to the 
place. There were wounded downstairs 
in the Town-hall. 

"Come on, boys," he said to Tom and 
Smith, "bring one stretcher, and we'll 
clear the place out. Hilda, you stay by 
the cars. We shan't be but a minute." 

They disappeared inside the battered 
building. Barkleigh walked up and down 
the Grand Place, felt of the machinery 
of each of the two ambulances, lit a 
cigarette, threw it away and chewed at 
an unlighted cigar. 

"It's hot," he said; "this is hot." 



54 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"And yet you are shaking as if you 
were chilly," observed Hilda. 

"We should never have come," went on 
Barkleigh. "I said so, away back there 
on the road. You remember I said so." 

"Yes, the first experience under fire 
is trying," assented Hilda. "I think the 
shells are the most annoying, don't 
you, Mr. Barkleigh? Now shrapnel 
seems more friendly — quite like a hail- 
storm in Iowa. I come from Iowa, you 
know. I don't believe you do know that 
I come from Iowa." 

"They're slow," said Barkleigh, look- 
ing toward the Town-hall. "Why can't 
they hurry them out?" 

"You see," explained Hilda, "there 
are only three of them actively at work, 
and it's quite a handful for them." 

In a few moments Smith and Tom 
appeared, carrying a man with a band- 
aged leg on their stretcher. Dr. McDon- 
nell was leading two others, who were 
able to walk with a little direction. One 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 55 

more trip in and out and the ambulances 
were loaded. 

"Back to Pervyse," ordered Dr. Mc- 
Donnell. 

At Pervyse, Scotch and Mrs. Bracher 
were ready for them. So was an English 
Tommy, who singled out Ainslie-Barkleigh. 

"Orders from Kitchener, sir," said the 
orderly. "You must return to Dunkirk 
at once. No correspondent is allowed 
at the front." 

Barkleigh listened attentively, and 
assented with a nod of his head. He 
walked up to the three ladies. 

"Very sorry," explained he. "I had 
hoped to stay with you, and go out again. 
Very interesting and all that. But K. is 
strict, you know, so I must leave you." 

He bowed himself away. 

"Oh, welcome intervention," breathed 
Mrs. Bracher. 

A few weeks had passed with their 
angry weather, and now all was green 



56 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

again and sunny. Seldom had the cen- 
tral square of Poperinghe looked gayer 
than on this afternoon, when soldiers 
were lined up in the middle, and on all 
the sides the people were standing by 
the tens and hundreds. High overhead 
from every window and on every pole, 
flags were streaming in the spring wind. 
Why shouldn't the populace rejoice, for 
had not this town of theirs held out 
through all the cruel winter: refuge and 
rest for their weary troops, and citadel 
of their King? And was not that their 
King, standing over yonder on the pave- 
ment, higher than the generals and 
statesmen on the steps of the Town-hall 
back of him? Tall and slender, crowned 
with youth and beauty, did he not hold 
in his hand the hearts of all his people? 
And to-day he was passing on merit to 
two English dames, and the people were 
glad of this, for the two English dames 
had been kind to their soldiers in sick- 
ness, and had undergone no little peril 



THE RIBBONS IN HIS COAT 57 

to carry them comfort and healing. Yes, 
they were glad to shout and clap hands, 
when, as Chevaliers of the Order of 
Leopold, the ribbon and star pendant 
were pinned on the breast of the sturdy 
Mrs. Bracher, and the silent, charming 
Scotch. The band bashed the cymbals 
and beat the drum, and the wind in- 
struments roared approval. And the 
modest young King saluted the two 
brave ladies. 

In a shop door, a couple of hundred 
yards from the ceremony, Hilda was 
standing quietly watching the joyous 
crowds and their King. Pushing through 
the throng that hemmed her in, a massive 
man came and stood by her. 

"Ah, Mr. Barkleigh," said Hilda, "this 
is a surprise." 

"It's a shame," he began. 

"What's a shame?" asked Hilda. 

"Why aren't they decorating you? 
You're the bravest of the lot." 

"By no means," said Hilda; "those 



58 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

two women deserve all that is coming 
to them. I am glad they are getting 
their pretty ribbon." 

With a sudden nervous gesture, Bark- 
leigh unfastened the bright decorations 
on his chest, and placed them in Hilda's 
hand. 

"Take them and wear them," he said, 
"I have no heart for them any more. 
They are yours." 

"I didn't win them, so I can't wear 
them," she answered, and started to 
hand them back. 

"No, I won't take them back," he 
said harshly, brushing her hand from him, 
"if you won't wear them, keep them. 
Hide them, throw them away. I'm done 
with them. I can't wear them any 
more since that afternoon in Nieuport." 

Hilda pinned the ribbons upon his coat. 

"I decorate you," she said, "for, verily, 
you are now worthy." 



THE BELGIAN REFUGEE 

By acts not his own, his consciousness 
is crowded with horror. Names of his 
ancient cities which should ring pleasantly 
in his ear — Louvain, Dinant, M alines : 
there is an echo of the sound of bells in 
the very names — recall him to his suffer- 
ing. No indemnity will cleanse his mind 
of the vileness committed on what he loved. 
By every aspect of a once-prized beauty, 
the face of his torment is made more clear. 
Of all that fills the life of memory — the 
secure home, the fruitful village and the 
well-loved land — there is no acre remain- 
ing where his thought can rest. Each re- 
membered place brings a sharper stroke of 
poignancy to the mind that is dispossessed. 

His is a mental life uprooted and flung 
out into a vast loneliness. Where can his 
thought turn when it would heal itself? 
To the disconsolate there has always been 



60 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

comfort in recalling the early home where 
childhood was nourished, the orchard and 
the meadow where first love came to the 
meeting, the eager city where ambition, 
full-panoplied, sprang from the brain. 
The mind is hung with pictures of what 
once was. But there must always be a 
local habitation for these rekindled heats. 
Somewhere, in scene and setting, the boy 
played, the youth loved, the man struggled. 
That richness of feeling is interwoven with 
a place. No passion or gladness comes 
out of the buried years without some bit 
of the soil clinging to it. 

Now, in a passing autumn, for a nation 
of people, all places are alike to them 
bitter in the recollection. The Belgian, 
disinherited, can never summon a presence 
out of the past which will not, in its com- 
ing, bring burning and slaughter. All 
that was fair in his consciousness has been 
seared with horror. Where can he go to 
be at home? To England? To a new 
continent? What stranger-city will give 



THE BELGIAN REFUGEE 61 

him back his memories? He is condemned 
forever to live in the moment, never to let 
his mind stray over the past. For, in 
the past, in gracious prospect, lie village 
and city of Flanders, and the name of the 
ravaged place will suddenly release a cloud 
of darkness with voices of pain. 




A 



III 

ROLLO, THE APOLLO 

RS. BRACHER was just starting 
on one of her excursions from 
Pervyse into Furnes. Her tiny 
first-aid hospital, hidden in the battered 
house, needed food, clothing, and dress- 
ings for the wounded. One morning 
when the three nurses were up in the 
trenches, a shell had dug down into their 
cellar and spilled ruin. Now, it is not 
well to live in a place which a gun has 
located, because modern artillery is fine 
in its workings to a hair's-breadth, and 
can repeat its performance to a fractional 
inch. So the little houshold had re- 
moved themselves from the famous cellar 
to a half -shattered house, which had one 
whole living-room on the ground floor, 
good for wounded and for the serving 
of meals; and one unbroken bedroom 



64 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

on the first floor, large enough for three 
tired women. 

"Any errands, girls?" she called to 
her two assistants as she mounted to her 
seat on the motor ambulance. 

"Bring me a man," begged Hilda. 
"Bring back some one to stir things up." 

Indeed, it had been slow for the 
nurses during the last fortnight. They 
were "at the front," but the front was 
peaceful. After the hot toil of the 
autumn attack and counter-attack, there 
had come a deadlock to the wearied 
troops. They were eaten up with the 
chill of the moist earth, and the per- 
petual drizzle. So they laid by their 
machine guns, and silently wore through 
the grey days. 

Victor, the orderly, cranked the engine 
for Mrs. Bracher, and she hummed 
merrily away. She drove the car. She 
was not going to have any fumbling 
male hand spoil that sweetly running 
motor. She had chosen the battle-front 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 65 

in Flanders as the perfect place for 
vindicating woman's courage, coolness, 
and capacity for roughing it. She was 
determined to leave not one quality of 
initiative and daring to man's monopoly. 
If he had worn a decoration for some 
"nervy" hazardous trait, she came pre- 
pared to pluck it from his swelling pride, 
cut it in two pieces and wear her half 
of it. 

Her only delay was a mile in from 
Pervyse. The engine choked, and the 
car grunted to a standstill. She was in 
front of a deserted farm-house. She had 
a half hope that there might be soldiers 
billeted there. In that case, she could 
ask one of them to step out and start 
up the engine for her. Cranking a 
motor is severe on even a sturdy woman. 
She climbed out over the dashboard 
from the wheel side, and entered the 
door-yard. The barn had been demol- 
ished by shells. The ground around the 
house was pitted with shell-holes, a foot 



66 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

deep, three feet deep, one hole six feet 
deep. The chimney of the house had 
collapsed from a well-aimed obus. Mrs. 
Bracher knocked at the door, and shook 
it. But there was no answer. The 
house carried that silent horror of a de- 
serted and dangerous place. It seemed 
good to her to come away from it, and 
return to the motor. She bent her back 
to the crank, and set the engine chug- 
ging. It was good to travel along to 
the sight of a human face. 

"No one stationed there?" she asked 
of the next sentinel. 

"It is impossible, Madame," he replied; 
"the enemy have located it exactly with 
a couple of their guns. Not one day 
passes but they throw their shells 
around it." 

As Mrs. Bracher completed the seven- 
mile run, and tore into the Grand Place 
of Furnes, she was greeted by cheers 
from the populace. And, indeed, she 
was a striking figure in her yellow 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 67 

leather jerkin, her knee-breeches and 
puttees, and her shining yellow "doggy" 
boots. She carried all the air of an 
officer planning a desperate coup. As 
she cut her famous half-moon curve 
from the north-east corner of the Place 
by the Gendarmerie over to the Hotel 
at the south-west, she saluted General 
de Wette standing on the steps of the 
Municipal Building. He, of course, knew 
her. Who of the Belgian army did not 
know those three unquenchable women 
living up by the trenches on the Yser? 
He gravely saluted the streak of yellow 
as it flashed by. Just when she was 
due to bend the curb or telescope her 
front wheel, she threw in the clutch, 
and, with a shriek of metal and a shiver 
of parts, the car came to a stop. She 
jumped out from it and strode away from 
it, as if it were a cast-off ware which she 
was never to see again. She entered 
the restaurant. At three of the tables 
sat officers of the Belgian regiments — 



68 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

lieutenants, two commandants, one cap- 
tain. At the fourth table, in the window, 
was dear little Doctor Neil McDonnell, 
beaming at the velocity and sensation 
of her advent. 

"You come like a yellow peril," said 
he. "If you are not careful, you will 
make more wounded than you heal." 

"Never," returned Mrs. Bracher, 
firmly; "it is always in control." 

The Doctor, who was a considerate 
as well as a brave leader, well knew how 
restricted was the diet under which 
those loyal women lived in the chilly 
house, caring for "les blesses" among the 
entrenched soldiers. So he extended him- 
self in ordering an ample and various 
meal, which would enable Mrs. Bracher 
to return to her bombarded dug-out 
with renewed vigor. 

'What's the news?' 5 she asked, after 
she had broken the back of her hunger. 

"W T e are expecting a new member 
for our corps," replied the Doctor, "a 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 69 

young cyclist of the Belgian army. He 
fought bravely at Liege and Namur, and 
later at Alost. But since Antwerp, his 
division has been disbanded, and he 
has been wandering about. We met him 
at Dunkirk. We saw at once how valu- 
able he would be to us, with his knowl- 
edge of French and Flemish, and his 
bravery." 

" Which ambulance will he go out 
with?" asked Mrs. Bracher. 

"He will have a touring-car of his 
own," replied Dr. McDonnell. 

"I thought you said he was a cyclist," 
objected Mrs. Bracher. 

"I gave him an order on Calais," 
explained the Doctor. "He went down 
there and selected a speed-car. I'm 
expecting him any minute," he added. 

The short afternoon had waned away 
into brief twilight, and then, with a 
suddenness, into the blackness of the 
winter night. As they two faced out 
into the Grand Place, there was depth on 



70 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

depth of black space, from which came 
the throb of a motor, the whistle of a 
soldier, the clatter of hooves on cobbles. 
Only out from their window there fell 
a short-reaching radiance that spread 
over the sidewalk and conquered a few 
feet of the darkness beyond. 

Into this thin patch of brightness, 
there rode a grey car, two-seated, long, 
slim, pointed for speed. The same rays 
of the window lamp sufficed to light up 
the features of the sole occupant of the 
car: — high cheek-bones, thin cheeks, and 
pale face, tall form. 

" There he is," said Dr. McDonnell, 
enthusiastically; "there's our new 
member." 

With a stride of power, the green-clad 
warrior entered the cafe, and saluted 
Dr. McDonnell. 

"Ready for work," he said. 

"I see you are," answered Dr. McDon- 
nell. "Will you sit down and join us?" 

"Gladly — in a moment. But I must 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 71 

first go across the square and see a 
Gendarme." 

"Your car is built for speed," put in 
Mrs. Bracher. 

"One hundred and twenty kilometres, 
the hour," answered the new-comer. 
"Let me see, in your language that will 
be seventy miles an hour. Swift, is it 
not?" 

"Why the double tires?" she asked. 

"You have a quick eye," he answered. 
"I like always the extra tires, you never 
know in war where the break-down will 
come. It is well to be ready." 

He flashed a smile at her, saluted the 
Doctor and left the cafe. 

"What a man!" exclaimed Dr. 
McDonnell. 

"That's what I say," agreed Mrs. 
Bracher. "What a man!" 

"Look at him," continued the Doctor. 

"I did, hard," answered Mrs. Bracher. 

Mrs. Bracher, Hilda, and Scotch, were 



72 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

the extreme advance guard of Doctor 
McDonnell's Motor Ambulance Corps. 
The rest of the Corps lived in the Con- 
vent hospital in Furnes. It was here that 
the newcomer and his speed-car were 
made welcome. He was a success from 
the moment of his arrival. He was 
easily the leading member of the Corps. 
He had a careless way with him. Being 
tall and handsome, he could be indif- 
ferent and yet hold the interest. To 
women that arrogance even added to his 
interest. His costume was very splendid 
— a dark green cloth which set off his 
straight form; the leather jacket, which 
made him look like some craftsman; the 
jaunty cap, which emphasized the high 
cheek-bones in the lean face. Both his 
face and his figure being spare, he prom- 
ised energy. He had the knack of mak- 
ing a sensation whenever he appeared. 
Only a few among mortals are gifted 
that way. Most of us have to get our 
own slippers and light our own cigars. 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 73 

But he was able to convey the idea that 
it was a privilege to serve him. The 
busy superintendent of the hospital, a 
charming Italian woman, cooked special 
meals for him, and served them in his 
room, so that he would not be contami- 
nated by contact with the Ambulance 
Corps, a noisy, breezy group. A boy 
scout pulled his boots off and on for him, 
oiled his machine, and cranked his motor. 
The lean cheeks filled out, the restless, 
audacious, roving eyes tamed down. A 
sleekness settled over his whole person. 
It was like discovering a hungry, prowl- 
ing night cat, homeless and winning its 
meat by combat, and bringing that cat 
to the fireside and supplying it with 
copious cream, and watching it fill out 
and stretch itself in comfort. 

There was a song just then that had a 
lilting chorus. It told of 'Rollo, the 
Apollo, the King of the Swells.' So the 
Corps named their new member Rollo. 
How wonderful he was with his pride of 



74 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

bearing, and the insolent way of him. 
He moved like an Olympian through 
the herd of shabby little scrambling folk. 

"Is it ever hot out your way?" queried 
Rollo during one of Mrs. Bracher's flying 
visits to Furnes. 

"I could hardly call it hot," replied 
the nurse. "The walls of our house, 
that is, the fragments of them left stand- 
ing, are full of shrapnel. The road 
outside our door is dented with shell 
holes. Every house in the village is 
shot full of metal. There's a battery 
of seven Belgian guns spitting away in 
our back-yard. But we don't call it 
hot, because we hate to exaggerate." 

"I'll have to come out and see you," 
he said, with a smile. 

He became a frequent visitor at 
Pervyse. 

"Rollo is wonderful," exclaimed Hilda. 

"How wonderful?" asked Mrs. Bracher. 

"Only to-day," explained Hilda, "he 
showed me his field-glasses, which he 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 75 

had taken from the body of a German 
officer whom he killed at Alost." 

"That's true," corroborated Scotch, 
"and once in his room at the hospital 
he showed me a sable helmet. Scarlet 
cloth and gold braid, and the hussar fur 
all over it. It's a beauty. I wish he'd 
give it to me." 

"How did he get it?" asked Mrs. 
Bracher. 

"He shot an officer in the skirmish 
at Zele." 

"He must have been a busy man with 
his rifle," commented Mrs. Bracher. 

"He was. He was," said Hilda. "Why, 
he's shot fifty-one men, since the war 
began." 

"Does he keep notches on his rifle?" 
queried Mrs. Bracher. 

"I think it's a privilege to have a 
man as brave as he is going out with 
us," replied Hilda. "We must bore him 
frightfully." 

"He's peaceful enough now, isn't he," 



76 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

observed Mrs. Bracher, " trotting around 
with a Red Cross Ambulance Corps. I 
should think he'd miss the old days." 

Hilda and Mrs. Bracher were having 
an early morning stroll. 

"It's a little too hot up by the 
trenches," said the nurse; "we'll take the 
Furnes road." 

"It was a wet night, last night," 
commented she, after they had trudged 
along for a few minutes. 

"Are you going to walk me to Furnes?" 
asked Hilda. 

"You're losing your prairie zip," re- 
torted Mrs. Bracher. 'You ought to be 
glad of the air, after that smelly straw." 

"The air is better than the mud," 
returned Hilda, holding up a boot, which 
had gathered part of the roadway to 
itself. 

"We'll be there in a minute," said 
the nurse. 

"Where's there?" asked Hilda. 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 77 

"Right here," answered Mrs. Bracher. 

They had come to the deserted farm- 
house where she had once met with her 
delay and where she had knocked in 



vam. 



a- 
a 



See here," she exclaimed. 
Wheel marks," said Hilda. 
Motor-car tracks," corrected Mrs. 
Bracher. 

The soggy turf that led from the road 
into the door-yard of the farm-house was 
deeply and freshly indented. 

"Perhaps some one's here now," sug- 
gested Hilda. 

"Never fear," answered the nurse. 
"It's night work. 

"Up to two weeks ago," she went on, 
"this farm was shot at, every day, from 
over the Yser. Since then, it hasn't 
been shelled at all." 

"What of it?" asked Hilda. 

"We'll see," said Mrs. Bracher. "It 
always pays to get up early, doesn't 
it, my dear?" 



78 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"I don't know," returned the girl, 
dubiously. She was footsore with Mrs. 
Bracher's speed. 

"Well, that's enough for one morn- 
ing," concluded the nurse, with one last 
look about the farm. 

"I should think it was," agreed Hilda. 

They returned to their dressing-station. 

It was early evening, and the nurses 
had finished their frugal supper. With 
the dishes cleared away, they were 
sitting for a cosy chat about the table. 
Overhead hung a lamp, with a base so 
broad that it cast a heavy shadow on 
the table under it. There was a fire of 
coals in the little corner stove, and 
through the open door of the stove a 
friendly glow spread out into the room. 
As they sat there resting and talking, a 
tap-tap came at the window. 

"Ah, the Commandant is back," said 
Hilda. The women brightened up. The 
door opened and their good friend, 




ROLLO, THE APOLLO 79 

Commandant Jost, entered. He was a 
man tall and slender and closely-knit, 
with a rich vein of sentiment, like all 
good soldiers. He was perhaps fifty -two or 
three years of age. His eyebrows slanted 
down and his moustache slanted up. His 
eyes were level and keen in their beam 
of light, and they puckered into genial 
lines when he smiled. His nose was 
bent in just at the bridge, where a bullet 
once ploughed past. This mishap had 
turned up the end of a large and formerly 
straight feature. It was good to have 
him back again after his fortnight away. 
The evening broke pleasantly with talk 
of common friends in the trenches. 

There came a ring at the door. A 
knob at the outer door pulled a string 
that ran to their room and released a 
tiny tinkle. Victor, the orderly, 
answered the ring. He had a message 
for the Commandant. Jost held it high 
up to read it by the lamp. Hilda 
brought a lighted candle, and placed it 



80 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

on the table. He sat down, wrote his 
answer, and gave it to the waiting 
soldier. He returned, closed the door, 
and looked straight into the face of 
each of his friends. 

"You have to go?" asked Hilda. 

"We expect an attack," he answered. 
It was then 9:30. 

"What time?" asked Hilda. 

"The Dixmude and Ramskappele at- 
tacks were just before dawn. When 
the mists begin to rise, and the enemy 
can see even dimly, then they attack. 
I think they will attack to-night, just so." 

"How does that concern you?' 3 asked 
Hilda. "What do you have to do?" 

"I have just asked my Colonel that 
I take thirty of my men and guard the 
section in front of the railroad tracks. 
That is where they will come through." 

"What is the situation in the trenches, 
to-night?" asked Hilda. 

"We have only a handful. Not more 
than fifty men." 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 81 

"Not more than fifty!" cried Mrs. 
Bracher. "How many mitrailleuse have 
you at the railroad?" 

"Six, two in the second story of the 
house, and four in the station opposite." 

"Six ought to be enough to rake the 
road." 

"Yes, but they won't come down the 
road," explained Jost; "they will come 
across the flooded field on rafts, with 
machine guns on the rafts. They can 
come down on both sides of the trench, 
and rake the trench. What can fifty 
men do against four or five machine 
guns? They will have to run like hares, 
or else be shot down to a man. They 
can rake the trenches for two miles on 
each side." 

"What will happen if the Germans 
get on top of the trenches?" asked Mrs. 
Bracher. 

"The very first thing they will do — 
they will place a gun on top of the 
trench, and rake this whole town. They 



82 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

can rake the road that leads to Furnes. 
It would cut off your retreat to Furnes." 

That meant the only escape for the 
women would be through the back-yard, 
and over fields knee-deep in mud, where 
dead horses lie loosely buried in hum- 
mock graves. 

"What do you think we had better 
do?" asked Hilda. "To leave now seems 
like shirking our job." 

"There'll be no job for you, if the 
enemy come through to-night," returned 
the Commandant; "they'll do the job. 
But listen, you'll have a little time. If 
you hear rifle fire or mitrailleuse fire on 
the trenches, then go, as fast as you can 
run. If you hear as few as only four 
soldiers running down this road, take to 
your heels after them. That will be 
your last chance." 

The bell tinkled again. The orderly 
called the Commandant into the hall. 
Jost returned with a message. He read 
it, and pulled out a note-book from his 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 83 

pocket. He consulted it with care. He 
sat down at the table, wrote his reply, 
and gave it to the messenger. He re- 
turned, shrugged his shoulders, and went 
silent. All waited for him to speak. 
Finally he roused himself. 

"The mitrailleuse have only 3500 
rounds left to each gun," he said, "and 
there are no cartridges in the trenches." 

"That means," prompted Hilda. 

"Four hundred cartridges a minute, 
those guns fire," he said, "that means 
eight or nine minutes, and then the 
Germans." 

A pounding came at the front door. 
A captain entered, throwing his long 
cape over his shoulder. 

"We have no ammunition," he said — 
"the men have nothing. I've just come 
from the Colonel." 

The Captain was excited, the Com- 
mandant silent. 

"Shall we evacuate?" Hilda pressed 
her question with him. 



84 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"I cannot answer for you," the Cap- 
tain said. "If the enemy attack, there's 
nothing to hold them. They'll come 
through. If they come, they'll take you 
women prisoners or kill you. You'll 
have to make your choice now. There 
will be no choice then." 

"Furnes isn't so prosperous, you 
know," said Hilda, "even if we did run 
back there." 

Only the day before, Furnes had 
received a long-distance bombardment 
that had killed thirty persons and 
wounded one hundred. 

At a word from the Commandant, 
the orderly left the room. The women 
heard him drive their ambulance out 
from shelter, crank up the engine, and 
run it for five minutes to get it thoroughly 
heated. Then he turned the engine off, 
and put a blanket over the radiator, 
tucking it well in to preserve the heat. 

"Let's put what we need into the 
car," suggested Mrs. Bracher. 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 85 

They picked up their bags, and went 
toward the ambulance. 

It was pleasant to do something active 
under that tension. They stepped out 
into a night of chill and blackness. They 
could not see ten feet in front of them. 
It was moon-time but no moon. Heavy 
clouds were in possession of the sky, 
weaving a thick texture of darkness. 

"There they start," said the Com- 
mandant. 

Shell fire was beginning from the north, 
from the direction of the sea. 

"They are covering their advance," 
he went on. 

"Those are 21 or 28 Point shells. 
They are falling short about 1800 yards, 
but they are coming straight in our 
direction." 

They walked past their car and down 
the road. They looked across the fields 
into the black night. Straight down the 
road a lamp suddenly shone in the 
gloom. It moved to and fro, and up 



86 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

and down. There was regularity in its 
motion. A great shaft of answering 
white light shot up into the night from 
the north. 

6 'They are signalling from inside our 
line here," said the Commandant, "over 
there to the enemy guns beyond Ram- 
skappele. Some spy down here with a 
flash-lamp is telling them that we're out 
of ammunition." 

"But can't we catch the spy?" urged 
Hilda. "That light doesn't look to be 
more than a few hundred yards away." 

"That is further away than it looks," 
answered Jost; "that's all of a mile away. 
He's hidden somewhere in a field." 

Mrs. Bracher seized Victor by the 
arm, and faced the Commandant. 

"I know where he's hidden," she 
cried. "Let me show you." 

The Commandant nodded assent. 

"Messieurs, les Beiges," she com- 
manded in a sharp, high voice, "come 
with me and move quickly!" 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 87 

She brought them back to the car. 

"Send for four of your men," she said 
to Jost. They came. 

"Wait in the house," she said to Hilda. 

"Now we start," Mrs. Bracher 
ordered. "Victor, you take the wheel. 
Drive down the Furnes road." 

They drove in silence for five minutes, 
till her quick eye picked a landmark out 
of the dimness. 

"Drive the car slowly past, and on 
down the road," she ordered, "don't 
stop it. We six must dismount while 
it is moving. Surround the house 

quietly. The Commandant and I will 
.enter by the front door." 

They had come to the deserted farm- 
house. It loomed dimly out of the 
vacant fields and against the background 
of travelling clouds. Victor stayed at 
the wheel. Mrs. Bracher, the Com- 
mandant, and the four soldiers, jumped 
off into the road. The six silently filed 
into the door-yard. The four soldiers 



88 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

melted into the night. Mrs. Bracher 
caught the handle of the door firmly and 
shoved. The door gave way. She and 
Jost stepped inside. The Commandant 
drew his pistol. He flashed his pocket 
light down the hall and up the stairs. 
There was nothing but vacancy. They 
passed into the room at their right hand. 
Jost's light searched its way around the 
room. In the corner, stood a tall soldier, 
dressed in green. 

"Let me introduce Monsieur Rollo, 
the spy," said Mrs. Bracher. There 
was triumph in her voice. The Com- 
mandant put a whistle to his lips and 
blew. His four men came stamping in, 
pistols in hand. 

"Clever device, this," said Mrs. 
Bracher. She had stooped and lifted 
out a large electric flash lamp from 
under a sweater. 

"Clever woman, this," said the Com- 
mandant, saluting Mrs. Bracher. "How 
did you come to know the place?" 



ROLLO, THE APOLLO 89 

"Monsieur Rollo uses double tires on 
a wet soil," she explained. 

"Monsieur Rollo will now bring his 
signal lamp outside the house," the 
Commandant said curtly. "He will signal 
the enemy that our reinforcements and 
ammunition have arrived, and that an 
attack to-night will be hopeless. He 
may choose to signal wrongly. In that 
case, you men will shoot him on the 
instant that firing begins at Pervyse." 

The soldiers nodded. They marched 
Rollo to the field, and thrust his signal 
lamp into his hands. 

"One moment," he said. He turned 
to Mrs. Bracher. 

"Where is the American girl to-night?" 
he asked. 

"At Pervyse, of course," replied the 
nurse, "where she always is. The very 
place where you wanted to bring your 
men through and kill us all." 

"I had forgotten," he said. "If Made- 
moiselle Hilda is at Pervyse, then I 



90 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

signal, as you suggest" — he turned to 
the Commandant — "but not because 
you order it — you and your little pop- 
guns." 

Mrs. Bracher sniffed scornfully. 

"One last bluff of a bluffer, as Hilda 
would say," she muttered. 

The soldiers stood in circle in the mud 
of the field, the tall green-clad figure in 
their midst. 

Rollo turned on the blinding flash that 
stabbed through the night. He held it 
high above his head, and at that level 
moved it three times from left to right. 
Then he swung the light in full circles, 
till it became a pinwheel of flame. Four 
miles away by the sea to the north, a 
white light shot up into the sky, rose 
twice like a fountain, and was followed 
by a starlight that fed out a green 
radiance. 

"The attack is postponed," he said. 



THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 

The German lay on a stretcher in the straw 
of the first dressing -station. His legs had 
been torn by shot. He was in pain. He 
looked into the faces of the men about him, 
the French doctors and dressers, the Belgian 
infantry. The lantern light was white and 
yellow on their faces. He drew out from the 
inner pocket of his mouse-colored coat a 
packet of letters, and from the packet the 
picture of a stout woman, who, like himself, 
was of middle-age. He handed it to the 
French doctor. " Meine Frau," he said. 

At the outer rim of the group, a Belgian 
drew a knife, ran it lightly across his own 
throat, and pointed mockingly to the German 
on the stretcher. 



IV 
THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 



^HE Commandant stepped down 
from his watch tower by the 
railway tracks. This watch 
tower was a house that had been struck 
but not tumbled by the bombardment. 
It was black and gashed, and looked 
deserted. That was the merit of it, for 
every minute of the day and night, some 
watcher of the Belgians sat in the 
window, one flight up, by the two 
machine guns, gazing out over the 
flooded fields, and the thin white strip 
of road that led eastward to the enemy 
trenches. Once, fifteen mouse-colored 
uniforms had made a sortie down the 
road and toward the house, but the eye 
at the window had sighted them, and let 
them draw close till the aim was very 



94 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

sure. Since then, there had been no 
one coming down the road. But a 
watcher, turn by turn, was always wait- 
ing. The Commandant liked the post, 
for it was the key to the safety of 
Pervyse. He felt he was guarding the 
three women, when he sat there on the 
rear supports of a battered chair, and 
smoked and peered out into the east. 

He came slowly down the road, — 
old wounds were throbbing in his mem- 
bers — and, as always, turned into the 
half-shattered dwelling where the nurses 
were making their home and tending 
their wounded. 

"How is the sentry-box to-night?' 5 
asked Hilda. 

"Draughty," said the Commandant, 
with a shiver; "it rocks in the wind." 

"You must have some rag-time," pre- 
scribed Hilda, and seated herself at the 
piano. 

It was Pervyse's only piano, untouched 
by shell and shrapnel, and nightly it 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 95 

sounded the praise of things. The little 
group drew close about the American 
girl, as she led them in a "coon song." 

"I say," said Hilda, looking up from 
the keys, "would any one believe it?" 

"Believe what?" asked Mrs. Bracher. 

"The lot of us here, exchanging fav- 
orites, with war just outside our window. 
I tell you," repeated Hilda, "no one 
would believe it." 

"They don't have to," retorted Mrs. 
Bracher, sharply. She had grown weary 
of telling folks at home how matters 
stood, and then having them say, "Fancy 
now, really?" 

The methodical guns had pounded the 
humanity out of Pervyse, and, with the 
living, had gone music and art. There 
was nowhere in the wasted area for 
the tired soldiers to find relief from 
their monotony. War is a dreary thing. 
With one fixed idea in the mind — to 
wait, to watch for some careless head 
over the mounded earth, and then to 



96 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

kill — war is drearier than slave labor, 
more nagging than an imperfect mar- 
riage, more dispiriting than unsuccess- 
ful sin. The pretty brass utensils of 
the dwellings had been pillaged. Can- 
vas, which had once contained bright 
faces, was in shreds. The figures of 
Christ and his friends that had stood 
high in the niches of the church, had 
fallen forward on their faces. All the 
little devices of beauty, cherished by 
the villagers, had been shattered. 

One perfect piano had been left un- 
manned by all the destruction that had 
robbed the place of its instruments of 
pleasure. With elation and laughter the 
soldiers had discovered it, when the 
early fierceness of the attack had ebbed. 
Straightway they carried it to the home 
of the women. 

When the Commandant first saw it, 
soon after its arrival in their living-room, 
he beamed all over. 

"The Broadwood," he said. "How 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 97 

that brings back the memories! When 
I was a young man once in Ostend, I 
was one of eight to play with Paderewski, 
that great musician. Yes, together we 
played through an afternoon. And the 
instrument on which I played was a 
Broadwood. I cannot now ever see it, 
without remembering that day in the 
Kursaal, and how he led us with that 
fingering, that vigor. Do you know how 
he lifts his hand high over the keys and 
then drops suddenly upon them?" 

'Yes, I have seen it," said Hilda; 
"like the swoop of an eagle." 

"I do not know that bird," returned 
the Commandant, "but that is it. It 
is swift and strong. He comes out of 
a stricken country, too; that is why he 
can play." 

"I wonder, feeling that way, that you 
ever gave up your music," said Hilda. 
"Why didn't you go on with it?" 

"I had thought of it. But there was 
always something in me that called, and 



98 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

I went into the army. For years we 
have known this thing was coming. A 
man could not do otherwise than hold 
himself ready for that. And now it is 
left to you young people to go on — 
always the new harmony, that sings in 
the ears, and never comes into the notes." 
The Commandant, Commandant Jost, 
was perhaps the best of all their soldier 
friends. He was straight and sturdy, a 
pine-tree of a man in his early fifties. 
He was famous in Flanders for his picked 
command of 110, all of them brave as he 
was brave, ready to be wiped out be- 
cause of their heart of courage. Often 
the strength of his fighting group was 
sapped, till one could count his men on 
the fingers of the hands. But always 
there were fresh fellows ready to go the 
road with him. He never ordered them 
into danger. He merely called for volun- 
teers. When he went up against absurd 
odds, and was left for dead, his men re- 
turned for him, and brought him away for 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 99 

another day. His time hadn't come, he 
said. It was no use shooting him 
down, and clipping the bridge from his 
nose, — when his day came, he would 
be done for, but not ahead of that. 
This valiant Belgian soldier was a mys- 
tic of war. 

In the trenches and at the hospitals, 
Hilda had met a race of prophets, men 
who carry about foreknowledge and pre- 
monitions. Sturdy bearded fellows who 
salute you as men about to die. They 
are perfectly cheery, as brave as the 
unthinking at their side, but they tramp 
firmly to a certain end. War lets loose 
the rich life of subconsciousness which 
most mortals keep bottled up in the 
sleepy secular days of humdrum. Peril 
and sudden death uncork those heady 
vapors, and sharpen the super-senses. 
This race of men with their presciences 
have no quarrel with death. They have 
made their peace with it. It is merely 
that they carry a foreknowledge of it — 



100 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

they are sure they will know when it is 
on the way. 

No man of the troops was more smit- 
ten with second-sight, than this friend 
of the Pervyse women, this courageous 
Commandant. His eyes were level to 
command, but they grew distant and 
luminous when his mood was on him. 
This gift in him called out the like in 
other men, and his pockets were heavy 
with the keepsakes of young soldiers, a 
photograph of the beloved, a treasured 
coin, a good-bye letter, which he was 
commissioned to carry to the dear 
one, when the giver should fall. With 
little faith that he himself would exe- 
cute the commissions, he had carefully 
labelled each memento with the name 
and address of its destination. For 
he knew that whatever was found on 
his body, the body of the fighting 
Commandant, the King's friend, would 
receive speedy forwarding to its appointed 
place. 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 101 

It was an evening of spring, but spring 
had come with little promise that way. 
Ashes of homes and the sour dead lay too 
thickly over those fields, for nature to 
make her great recovery in one season. 
The task was too heavy for even her 
vast renewals. Patience, she seemed to 
say, I come again. 

The Commandant was sitting at ease 
enjoying his pipe. 

"Mademoiselle Hilda," said he. Hilda 
was sitting at the piano, but no tunes 
were flowing. She was behaving badly 
that evening and she knew it. She 
fumbled with the sheaves of music, and 
chucked Scotch under the chin, and 
doctored the candles. She was manifest- 
ing all the younger elements in her 
twenty-two years. 

"Mademoiselle Hilda," insisted the 
Commandant. He was sentimental, and 
full of old-world courtesies, but he was 
used to being obeyed. Hilda became 
rapt in contemplating a candlestick. 



102 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"Mademoiselle Hilda, a little music, 
if you please," lie said with a finality. 

"You play," said Hilda to Scotch, 
sliding off the soap-box which served 
to uphold the artist to her instrument. 

"Hilda, you make me tired," chided 
Scotch. "The Commandant has given 
you his orders." 

"Oh, all right," said Hilda. 

She played pleasantly with feeling and 
technique. More of her hidden life came 
to an utterance with her music than at 
other times. She led her notes gently to 
a close. 

"Mademoiselle Hilda," said the Com- 
mandant from his seat in the shadows 
on the sofa, "parlez-vous frangais?" 

This was his regular procedure. Why 
did he say it? They never could guess. 
He knew that the women, all three, 
understood French — Mrs. Bracher and 
Scotch speaking it fluently, Hilda, as 
became an American, haltingly. Did he 
not carry on most of his converse with 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 103 

them in French — always, when eloquent 
or sentimental? But unfailingly he used 
his formula, when he was highly pleased. 
They decided he must once have known 
some fair foreigner who could only faintly 
stammer in his native tongue, and that 
the habit of address had then become 
fixed upon him for moments of emotion. 

He repeated his question. 

"Oui," responded the girl. He kissed 
his fingers lightly to her, and waved the 
tribute in her direction, as if it could be 
wafted across the room. 

"Chere artiste," said he, with a voice 
of conviction. 
. "And now the bacarolle," he pleaded. 

"There are many bacarolles," she ob- 
jected. 

"I know, I know," he said, "and yet, 
after all, there is only one bacarolle." 

"All right," she answered, obediently, 
and played on. The music died away, 
and the girl in her fought against the 
response that she knew was coming. She 



104 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

began turning over sheets of music on 
the rack. But the Commandant was 
not to be balked. 

"Parlez-vous frangais?" he inquired, 
"vous, Mademoiselle Hilda." 

"Oui, mon Commandant," she an- 
swered. 

"Chere artiste," he said; "chere 
artiste." 

"Ah, those two voices," he went on 
with a sigh; "they go with you, wherever 
you are. It is music, that night of love 
and joy. And here we sit — " 

"Yes, yes," interrupted Mrs. Bracher, 
who did not care to have an evening of 
gaiety sag to melancholy; "how about a 
little Cesar Franck?" 

"Yes, surely," agreed the Comman- 
dant, cheerily; "our own composer, you 
know, though we never gave him his 
due." 

Hilda ran through the opening of the 
D Minor. 

"Now it is your turn," said she. 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 105 

"My fingers are something stiff, with 
these cold nights by the window," replied 
the Commandant, "but certainly I will 
endeavor to play." 

He seated himself at the instrument. 

"Chere artiste," he murmured to the 
girl, who was retreating to the lounge. 

The Commandant played well. He 
needed no notes, for he was stored with 
remembered bits. He often played to 
them of an evening, before he took his 
turn on watch. He played quietly along 
for a little. Out of the dark at their 
north window, there came the piping 
of a night bird. Birds were the only 
creatures seemingly untouched by the 
war. The fields were crowded thick 
with the bodies of faithful cavalry and 
artillery horses. Dogs and cats had 
wasted away in the seared area. Cattle 
had been mowed down by machine guns. 
Heavy sows and their tiny yelping litter, 
were shot as they trundled about, or, 
surviving the far-cast invisible death, 



106 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

were spitted for soldiers' rations. And 
with men, the church-yard and the fields, 
and even the running streams, were 
choked. Only birds of the air, of all the 
living, had remained free of their ele- 
ment, floating over the battling below 
them, as blithe as if men had not sown 
the lower spaces with slaughter. 

And now in this night of spring, one 
was calling to its mate. The Com- 
mandant heard it, and struck its note on 
the upper keyboard. 

"Every sound in nature has its key," 
he said; "the cry of the little bird has 
it, and the surf at Nieuport." 

"And the shells?" asked Hilda. 

"Yes, the shells, they have it," he 
answered gravely; "each one of them, as 
it whistles in the air, is giving its note. 
You have heard it?" 

"Yes," answered Hilda. 

"Why, this," he said. He held his 
hands widely apart to indicate the key- 
board — "this is only a little human 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 107 

dipping, like a bucket, into the ocean 
waves of sound. It can't give us back 
one little part of what is. Only a poor, 
stray sound out of the many can get 
itself registered. The rest drift away, 
lost birds on the wing. The notes in 
between, the splintered notes, they can- 
not sound on our little instruments." 

A silence had fallen on the group. 
Out of the hushed night that covered 
them, a moaning grew, that they knew 
well. One second, two seconds of it, and 
then the thud fell somewhere up the line. 
As the shell was wailing in the air, a 
hidden string, inside the frame, quivered 
through its length, and gave out an 
under-hum. It was as if a far away call 
had rung it up. One gun alone, out of 
all the masked artillery, had found the 
key, and, from seven miles away, played 
the taut string. 

"There is one that registers," said the 
Commandant; "the rest go past and no 
echo here." 



108 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

Firmly he struck the note that had 
vibrated. 

"That gun is calling for me," said he; 
"the others are lost in the night. But 
that gun will find me." 

"You talk like a soothsayer," said 
Mrs. Bracher, with a sudden gesture of 
her hand and arm, as if she were brushing 
away a mist. 

"It's all folly," she went on, "I don't 
believe it. Good heavens, what is that?" 
she added, as a footstep crunched in the 
hall-way. "You've got me all unstrung, 
you and your croaking." 

An orderly entered and saluted the 
Commandant. 

"They've got the range of the Station, 
mon Commandant," he reported; "they 
have just sent a shell into the tracks. 
It is dangerous in the look-out of the 
house. Do you wish Victor to remain?' 5 

"I will relieve him," said the Com- 
mandant, and he left swiftly and silently, 
as was his wont. 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 109 

Hilda returned to the piano, and 
began softly playing, with the hush- 
pedal on. The two women drew close 
around her. Suddenly she released the 
pedal, and lifted her hands from the 
keys, as if they burned her. One string 
was still faintly singing which she had 
not touched, the string of the key that 
the Commandant had struck. 

"Mercy, child, what ails you?" ex- 
claimed Mrs. Bracher. "You've all got 
the fidgets to-night." 

"That string again," said the girl. 

She rose from the piano, and went 
out into the night. They heard her 
footsteps on the road. 

"Hilda, Hilda," called Scotch, loudly. 

"Leave her alone, she is fey," said 
Mrs. Bracher. "I know her in these 
moods. You can't interfere. You must 
let her go." 

"We can at least see where she goes," 
urged Scotch. 

They followed her at a distance. She 



110 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

went swiftly up the road, and straight 
to the railway tracks. She entered the 
house, the dark, wrecked house, where 
from the second story window, a per- 
petual look-out was kept, like the watch 
of the Vestal Virgins. They came to the 
open door, and heard her ascend to the 
room of the vigil. 

"You must come," they heard her 
say, "come at once." 

"No, no," answered the voice of the 
Commandant, "I am on duty here. 
But you — what brings you here? You 
cannot stay. Go at once. I order you." 

"I shall not go till you go," the girl 
replied in expressionless tones. 

"I tell you to go," repeated the Com- 
mandant in angry but suppressed voice. 

'You can shoot me," said the girl, 
"but I will not go without you. Come 
— ' her voice turned to pleading — 
"Come, while there is time." 

"My time has come," said the Com- 
mandant. "It is here — my end." 



THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 111 

"Then for me, too," she said, "but I 
have come to take you from it." 

There was a silence of a few seconds, 
then the sound of a chair scraping the 
floor, heavy boots on the boarding, and 
the two, Commandant and girl, descend- 
ing the stairs. Unastonished, they 
stepped out and found the two women 
waiting. 

"We must save the girl," said the 
Commandant. "Come, run for it, all of 
you, run!" 

He pushed them forward with his 
hands, and back down the road they had 
come. He ran and they ran till they 
reached their dwelling, and entered, and 
stood at the north window, looking over 
toward the dim house from which they 
had escaped. Out from the still night 
of darkness, came a low thunder from 
beyond the Yser. In the tick of a pulse- 
beat, the moaning of a shell throbbed on 
the air and, with instant vibrancy, the 
singing string of the piano at their back 



112 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

answered the flight of the shell. And in 
the same breath, they heard a roar at 
the railroad, and the crash of timbers. 
Soft licking flames broke out in the house 
of the Belgian watchers. Slowly but 
powerfully, the flames gathered volume, 
and swept up their separate tongues into 
one bright blaze, till the house was a 
bonfire against the heavy sky. 



LOST 

There were cities in Belgium of medieval 
loveliness, where the evening light lay in 
deep purple on canals seeping at founda- 
tions of castle and church, with the sacred 
towers tall in the sky, and a moon just 
over them, and a star or two beside. 

That beauty has been torn out of a man's 
consciousness and spoiled to his love for 
ever, by moving up a howitzer and priming 
it with destruction. First, the rumble of 
the gun from far away, then the whistle 
of flying metal, sharpening its anger as it 
nears, then the thud and roar of explosion 
as it clutches and dissolves its mark. Now 
its seven-mile journey is ended. It has 
found its home and its home is a ruin. 
Over the peaceful earth and under a silent 
sky, bits of destruction are travelling, pro- 
jections of the human will. Where lately 
there was a soft outline, rising from the 



114 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

soil as if the stones of the field had been 
called together by the same breath that 
spread the forest, now there is a heap of 
rock-dust. Man, infinite in faculty, has 
narrowed his devising to the uses of havoc. 
He has lifted his hand against the im- 
mortal part of himself. He has said — 
" The works I have wrought I will turn 
back to the dust out of which they came." 

All the good labor of minds and hands 
which we cannot bring back is undone in 
an instant of time by a few pounds of 
chemical. That can be burned and broken 
in the passage of one cloud over the moon 
which not all the years of a century will 
restore. Seasons return, but not to us 
returns the light in the windows of Rheims. 



V 

WAR 



p^HERE fell a day when the call 
came from Ypres to aid the 
English. A bitter hot engage- 
ment had been fought for seven days, 
with a hundred and twenty thousand 
men in action, and the woods and fields 
on the Hoogar road were strewn with 
the wounded. Dr. McDonnell, the head 
of the Ambulance Corps, rode over from 
Furnes to the shell-blackened house of 
the nurses in Pervyse. With him he 
brought Woffington, a young Englishman, 
to drive the ambulance. He asked Hilda 
to go with them to Ypres. 

"Scotch, English and American, all 
on one seat," said Hilda with a smile. 

They covered the thirty miles in one 
hour, and went racing through the city 



116 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

of Ypres, eastward toward the action. 
Half way out to the noise of artillery, 
their car was stopped by an English officer, 
handsome, courteous, but very firm. 

"You cannot go out on this road," 
he said. 

"We will be back before you know it," 
pleaded Hilda. "We will bring back your 
wounded. Let me show you." 

"Report to me on your way back," 
he ordered. "My name is Fitzgerald, 
Captain Fitzgerald." 

They rode on. All down the road, 
straggled wounded men, three miles of 
them limped, they held up a red hand, 
they carried a shattered arm in a sling. 
There was blood on their faces. They 
walked with bowed head, tired. 

"These are the lucky ones," said Wof- 
fington, "they only got scotched." 

That was the famous battle of Ypres. 
Of the dead there were more than the 
mothers of a countryside could replace 
in two generations. But death is war's 



WAR 117 

best gift. War's other gifts are malicious 
— fever and plague, and the maiming 
of strength, and the fouling of beauty — 
shapely bodies tortured to strange forms, 
eager young faces torn away. Death is 
choicer than that, a release from the 
horror of life trampled like a filthy weed. 

"Mons was a birthday party to this," 
said a Tommy to Hilda. "They're ex- 
pecting too much of us. The whole thing 
is put on us to do, and it takes a lot 
of doing." 

Dr. McDonnell and Woffington loaded 
the car with the severest of the cases, 
and returned to the white house of the 
Officer. He was waiting for them, grim, 
attentive. 

Hilda flung up the hood : — two Tom- 
mies at length on the stretchers on one 
side of the car; opposite them, seven 
Tommies in a row with hand, arm, foot, 
leg, shoulder, neck and breast wounds. 
It was too good a piece of rescue work 
to be strangled with Red Tape. The 



118 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

Officer could not refrain from a smile of 
approval. 

"You may work along this road," he 
said, "but look out for the other offi- 
cers. They will probably stop you. But, 
remember, my permission holds good 
only for to-day. Then you must go 
back. This isn't according to regula- 
tions. Now, go on to the hospital." 

Ten minutes more, and they swung 
inside the great iron gates of the Sisters 
of Mercy. Never had Hilda felt the war 
so keenly as now. She had been dealing 
with it bit by bit. But here it was 
spread out beyond all dealing with. She 
had to face it without solutions. 

There, in the Convent, known now 
as Military Hospital Number One, was 
row after row of Khaki men in bed. 
They had overflowed to the stone floor 
down the long corridors, hundreds of 
yards of length, and every foot close 
packed, like fish in a tin, with helpless 
outstretched men. The grey stones and 



WAR 119 

the drab suits on the bundles of straw, — 
what a backwash from the tides of 
slaughter. If a man stood on his feet, 
he had to reach for a cane. There were 
no whole men there, except the busy 
stretcher-bearers bringing in new tenants 
for the crowded smelly place. 

As quickly as they could unload their 
men, and stuff them into the corridor, 
Hilda and the doctor and Woffington 
sped back down the line, and up to 
the thronged dressing-stations. Wounded 
men were not their only charge, nor 
their gravest. They took in a soldier 
sobbing from the shock of the ceaseless 
shell fire. The moaning and wasp-like 
buzz of the flying metal, then the earth- 
shaking thud of its impact, and the roar 
of its high explosive, had played upon 
nerves not elastic enough to absorb 
the strain, till the man became a 
whimpering child. And they carried in 
a man shaking from ague, a big, fine 
fellow, trembling in every part, who 



120 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

could not lift a limb to walk. That 
which had been rugged enough for a 
lifetime of work became palsied after 
a few weeks of this king's sport. This 
undramatic slaughter was slower than 
the work of the guns, but it was as 
thorough. A man with colic was put 
into the car. 

"I'm bad," he said. The pain kept 
griping him, so that he rode leaning down 
with his face pointed at the footboard. 

Working as Hilda worked, with her 
two efficient friends and a well-equipped 
dressing-station, their own hospital only 
seven miles to the rear of them, she had 
been able to measure up to any situation 
that had been thrust at her. It was 
buckle to it, and work furiously, and 
clean up the mess, and then on to the 
next. But here was a wide-spread misery 
that overwhelmed her. Dr. McDonnell 
was as silent as the girl. He had a 
sensitiveness to suffering which twenty 
years of London practice had not dulled. 



WAR m 

The day wore along, with spurt after 
spurt to the front, and then the slower 
drive back, when Woffington guided the 
car patiently and skilfully, so that the 
wounded men inside should not be shaken 
by the motion. They had a snack of 
luncheon with them, and ate it while 
they rode. Their little barrel of water, 
swinging between the wheels, had long 
ago gone to fevered men. 

" First ambulance I've seen in twenty- 
four hours," said Captain Davies, as 
he came on them out of the dusk of 
Hoogar wood. The stern and unbending 
organization of the military had found it 
necessary to hold a hundred or more 
ambulances of the Royal Army Medical 
Corps in readiness all day in the market 
place of Ypres against a sudden evacua- 
tion. So there were simply no cars, but 
their one car, to speed out to the front 
and gather the wounded. 

It was strange, in the evening light, to 
work out along the road between lines 



122 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

of poplar trees. Dim forms kept passing 
them — two by two, each couple with a 
stretcher and its burden. An old farm 
cart came jogging by, wrenching its 
body from side to side as it struck 
invisible hummocks and dipped into shell 
holes. It was loaded with outstretched 
forms of men, whose wounds were torn at 
by the jerking of the cart. In com- 
panies, fresh men, talking in whispers, 
were softly padding along the road on 
their way to the trenches, to relieve the 
staled fighters. The wide silence was 
only broken by the occasional sharp 
clatter and ping of some lonely sniper's 
rifle. 

It was ten o'clock of the evening, and 
the ambulance had gone out one mile 
beyond the hamlet of Hoogar. The 
Doctor and Hilda alighted at the thick 
wood, which had been hotly contended 
for, through the seven days. It had 
been covered with shell fire as thoroughly 
as a fishing-net rakes a stream. They 



WAR 123 

waited for Woffington to turn the car 
around. It is wise to leave a car headed 
in the direction of safety, when one is 
treading on disputed ground. 

A man stepped out of the wood. 

"Are you Red Cross?" he asked. 

"Yes," said Dr. McDonnell, "and we 
have our motor ambulance here." 

"Good!" answered the stranger. "We 
have some wounded men in the Chateau 
at the other side of the wood. Come 
with me." 

"How far?" asked Hilda. 

"Oh, not more than half a mile." 

They seeped along over the wet wood 
road, speaking not at all, as snipers were 
scattered by night here and there in the 
trees. They came to the old white build- 
ing, a country house of size and beauty. 
In the cellar, three soldiers were lying on 
straw. Two of them told Hilda they 
had been lying wounded and uncared 
for in the trenches since evening of the 
night before. They had just been brought 



124 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

to the house. She went over to the 
third, a boy of about eighteen years. 
He was shot through the biceps muscle 
of his left arm. He was pale and 
weak. 

"How long have you been like this?' ! 
asked the girl. 

"Since four o'clock, yesterday," he 
whispered. 

"Thirty hours," said Hilda. 

Dr. McDonnell made a request to the 
officer for help. He gave four men and 
two stretchers. They put the boy and 
one of the men on the stretchers, and 
hoisted them through the cellar window. 
Woffington and McDonnell took the 
lantern and searched till they found a 
wheelbarrow. The third man, wounded 
in the shoulder, threw an arm over Dr. 
McDonnell, and Woffington steadied him 
at the waist. He stumbled up the steps, 
and collapsed into the barrow. 

Woffington and the Doctor took turns 
in wheeling him through the mud. Hilda 



WAR 125 

walked at their side. The wheel bit 
deeply into the road under the weight. 
They had to spell each other, fre- 
quently. After a few hundred yards, 
they met a small detachment of cavalry, 
advancing toward the house. The horses 
seemed to feel the tension, and shared in 
the silence of their drivers, stepping noise- 
lessly through the murk. Woffington 
was forced to turn the barrow into the 
ditch. It required the strength of the 
two men, one at each handle, to shove 
it out on the road again. 

The stretchers had reached the ambu- 
lance ahead of the wheelbarrow. They 
loaded the car hastily — there was no 
time to swing stretchers. They put the 
three wounded in on the long wooden 
seat. The boy with the torn biceps 
fainted on Hilda's shoulder. She rode in 
with him. At Hoogar dressing-station, 
she asked the military doctor for water 
for the boy. He had come to, and kept 
whispering — "Water, water." 



126 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"I have no water for you," said the 
Doctor. 

A soldier followed her back to the car 
and gave the lad to drink from his 
bottle. There was only a swallow in it. 

When they reached the Convent, the 
officer in charge came running out. 

"I'll take this load, but that's all," 
he said. "Can't take any more, full up. 
Next trip, go on into the town, to Mili- 
tary Hospital Number Three." 

They started back toward the wood. 

"I've only got petrol enough for one 
trip, and then home again," said 
Woffington. 

"All the way, then," said the Doctor, 
"out to the farthest trenches. We'll 
make a clean sweep." 

They shot past Hoogar, and out 
through the wood, and on to the trenches 
of the Cheshires. Just back of the 
mounded earth, the reserves were sleep- 
ing in the mud of the road, and on the 
wet bank of the ditch. The night was 



WAR 127 

dark and silent. A few rods to the right, 
a shelled barn was blazing. 

"Have you any wounded?" asked Dr. 
McDonnell. 

"So many we haven't gathered them 
in," answered the officer. "What is the 
use? No one to carry them away." 

"I'll carry as many as I can," said the 
Doctor. 

"I'll send for them," replied the cap- 
tain. He spread his men out in the 
search. Three wounded were placed in 
the car, all of them stretcher cases. 

"Room for one more stretcher case," 
said Dr. McDonnell; "the car only holds 
four." 

"Bring the woman," ordered the 
officer. 

His men came carrying an aged peas- 
ant woman, grey-haired, heavy, her black 
dress soggy with dew and blood. 

"Here's a poor old woman," explained 
the captain; "seems to be a Belgian 
peasant. She was working out in the 



128 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

fields here, while the firing was going on. 
She was shot in the leg and fell down in 
the field. She's been lying on her face 
there all day. Can't you take her out 
of the way?" 

"Surely," said Hilda. 

The old woman was heavier than a 
soldier, heavier and more helpless. 

"The car is full," said Hilda; "you 
have more wounded?" 

The officer smiled. 

"Of course," he answered; "here come 
a few of them, now." 

The girl counted them. She had to 
leave twelve men at that farthest trench, 
because the car was full. On the trip 
back, she jumped down at the Hoogar 
dressing-station, and there she found 
sixteen more men strewed around in 
the straw, waiting to be removed. 
Twenty-eight men she had to ride away 
from. 

For the first time in that long day, 
they went past the Convent-hospital, and 



WAR 129 

on into the city of Ypres itself, down 
through the Grand Place, and then 
abruptly through a narrow street to the 
south. Here they found Military Hos- 
pital Number Three. The wounded men 
were lifted down and into the courtyard. 
Lastly, the woman. 

"Yes, we'll take her," said the good- 
hearted Tommies, who lent a hand in 
unloading the car. But their officer was 
firm. 

"We have no room," he said; "we 
must keep this hospital for the soldiers. 
I wish I could help you." 

"But what am I to do with her?" 
asked Hilda in dismay. 

"I am sorry," said the officer. He 
walked away. 

"The same old story," said Hilda; 
"no place for the old in war-time. 
They'll turn us away from all the 
hospitals. Anyone who isn't a soldier 
might as well be dead as in trouble." 

The old woman lay on the stretcher 



130 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

in the street. Her mouth had fallen 
open, as if she had weakened her hold on 
things. There was something beyond 
repair about her appearance, and some- 
thing unrebuking, too. "Do with me 
what you please," she seemed to say, 
"I shall make no complaint. I am too 
old and feeble to make you any trouble. 
Leave me here in the gutter if you 
like. No one will ever blame you for 
it, surely not I." 

"Lift her back," ordered the Doctor; 
"we'll go hunting." 

He had seen a convent near the mar- 
ket square when they had gone through 
in the morning. They rode to the door, 
and pulled the hanging wire. The bell 
resounded down long corridors. Five 
minutes passed. Then the bolt was shot, 
and a sleepy-eyed Sister opened the door, 
candle in hand. 

"Sister, I beg you to take this poor 
old peasant woman in my car," pleaded 
Hilda, "she is wounded in the leg." 



WAR 131 

The Sister made no reply but threw 
the door wide open, then turned and 
shuffled off down the stone corridor. 

"Come," said Hilda; "we have found a 
home." 

The men lifted the stretcher out, and 
followed the dim twinkling light down 
the passage. It turned into a great 
room. They followed in. Every bed 
was occupied — perhaps fifty old women 
sleeping there, grey hair and white hair 
on the pillows, red coverlets over the 
beds. To the end of the room they 
went, where one wee little girl was sleep- 
ing. The Sister spread bedding on the 
floor, and lifted the child from the cot. 
She stretched herself a moment in the 
chilly sheets, then settled into sleep, with 
her face, shut-eyed, upturned toward 
the light. Hilda sighed with relief. Their 
work was ended. 

"Now for home," she said. "Fifteen 
and a half hours of work." 

It was half an hour after midnight, 



132 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

when they drew up in Ypres market 
square and glanced down the beautiful 
length of the Cloth Hall, that building 
of massive and light-winged proportion. 
It was the last time they were ever to see 
it. It has fallen under the shelling, and 
cannot be rebuilt. They paused to pick 
their road back to Furnes, for in the 
darkness it was hard to find the street 
that led out of the town. They thought 
they had found it, and went swiftly 
down to the railway station before they 
knew their mistake. As they started 
to turn back and try again, a great shell 
fell into the little artificial lake just 
beyond them. It roared under the sur- 
face, and then shot up a fountain of 
water twenty feet high, with edges of 
white foam. 

"It is time to go," said Hilda; "they 
will send another shell. They always 
do. They are going to bombard the 
town." 

They spurted back to the square, and 



WAR 133 

as they circled it, still puzzled for the 
way of escape, two shells went sailing 
high over them and fell into the town 
beyond. 

"Jack Johnsons," said Woffington. 
This time, he made the right turn, back 
of the Cloth Hall into the safe country. 

Never had it felt so good to Hilda to 
leave a place. 

"I am afraid," she said to herself. 
Now she knew why brave men some- 
times ran like rabbits. 

"Go back to London, and report what 
we have seen," urged Dr. McDonnell. 
"We can set England aflame with it. 
The English people will rise to it, if 
they know their wounded are being 
neglected." 

"It takes a lot to rouse the English," 
said Hilda; "that is their greatest qual- 
ity, their steadiness. In our country 
we'd have a crusade over the situation, 
and then we'd forget all about it. But 



134 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

you people won't believe it for another 
year or so. When you do believe it, 
you'll cure it." 

"You will see," replied the Doctor. 
I'll try," said Hilda. 



«T>1 



It was one of those delightful mixed 
grills in Dover Street, London, where 
men and women are equally welcome. 
Dover Street is lined with them, pleasant 
refuges for the wives of army officers, 
literary women of distinction, and the 
host of well-to-do uncelebrated persons, 
who make the rich background of mod- 
ern life. Dr. McDonnell's warm friend, 
the Earl of Tottenham, and his wife, 
were entertaining Hilda at dinner, and, 
knowing she had something to tell of 
conditions at Ypres, they had made 
Colonel Albert Bevan one of the party. 

Hilda thought Colonel Bevan one of 
the cleverest men she had ever met. He 
had a quick nervous habit of speech, a 
clean-shaven alert face, with a smile that 



WAR 135 

threw her off guard and opened the way 
for the Colonel to make his will prevail. 
He was enjoying a brilliant Parliamen- 
tary career. He had early thrown his 
lot with the Liberals, and had never 
found cause to regret it. He had been 
an under-secretary, and, when the war 
broke out, Kitchener had chosen him 
for his private emissary to the fighting 
line to report back to the Chief the exact 
situation. He was under no one else 
than K.; came directly to him with his 
findings, went from him to the front. 

"My dear young lady," the Colonel 
was saying, "you've forgotten that Ypres 
was the biggest fight of the war, one of 
the severest in all history. In a day or 
two, we got things in hand. You came 
down on a day when the result was just 
balanced. It was a toss-up whether the 
other fellows would come through or 
not. You see, you took us at a bad 
time." 

"How about the ambulances that 



136 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

weren't working?" asked Hilda. 'The 
square was lined with them." 

"I know," responded the Colonel, 
"but the city was likely to be evacuated 
at any hour. As a matter of fact, those 
ambulances were used all night long after 
the bombardment began, emptying the 
three military hospitals, and taking the 
men to the train. We sent them down 
to Calais. You were most fortunate in 
getting through the lines at all. I 
shouldn't have blamed Captain Fitz- 
gerald if he had ordered you back to 
Furnes." 

"Captain Fitzgerald!" exclaimed Hilda. 
"How did you know I was talking with 
him?" 

"I was there that day in Ypres," said 
the Colonel. 

"You were in Ypres," repeated Hilda, 
in astonishment. 

"I was there," he said; "I saw the 
whole thing. You came down upon our 
lines as if you had fallen out of a blue 



WAR 137 

moon. What were we to do? A very 
charming young American lady, with a 
very good motor ambulance. It was a 
visitation, wasn't it? If we allowed it 
regularly, what would become of the 
fighting? Why, there are fifty volunteer 
organizations, with cars and nurses, cool- 
ing their heels in Boulogne. If we let 
one in, we should have to let them all 
come. There wouldn't be any room for 
troops." 

"But how about the wounded?" 
queried Hilda. "Where do they come in?" 

"In many cases, it doesn't hurt them 
to lie out in the open air," responded the 
Colonel; "that was proved in the South 
African War. The wounds often heal 
if you leave them alone in the open air. 
But you people come along and stir up 
and joggle them. In army slang, we call 
you the body snatchers." 

"What you say about the wounded 
is absurd," replied Hilda. 

"Tut, tut," chided the Colonel. 



138 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"I mean just that," returned the girl, 
with heat. "It is terrible to leave men 
lying out who have got wounded. It is 
all rot to say the open air does them 
good. If the wound was clean from a 
bullet, and the air pure, and the soil 
fresh as in a new country, that would be 
true in some of the cases. The wound 
would heal itself. But a lot of the 
wounds are from jagged bits of shell, 
driving pieces of clothing and mud from 
the trenches into the flesh. The air is 
septic, full of disease from the dead men. 
They lie so close to the surface that a 
shell, anywhere near, brings them up. 
Three quarters of your casualties are 
from disease. The wound doesn't heal; 
it gets gangrene and tetanus from the 
stale old soil. And instead of having 
a good fighting man back in trim in a 
fortnight, you have a sick man in a 
London hospital for a couple of months, 
and a cripple for a lifetime." 

"You would make a good special 



WAR 139 

pleader," responded the Colonel with a 
bow. "I applaud your spirit, but the 
wounded are not so important, you 
know. There are other considerations 
that come ahead of the wounded." 

"But don't the wounded come first?" 
asked Hilda, in a hurt tone. 

"Certainly not," answered the Colonel. 
"We have to keep the roads clear for 
military necessity. This is the order in 
which we have to regard the use of roads 
in war-time." He checked off his list 
on his fingers — 

"First comes ammunition, then food, 
then reinforcements, and fourth, the 
wounded." 



IN RAMSKAPPELE BARNYARD 

Thirteen dead men were scattered about 
in the straw and dung. Some of them 
were sitting in absurd postures, as if they 
were actors in a pantomime. Others of 
them, though burned and shattered, lay 
peacefully at full length. No impress of 
torture could any longer rob them of the 
rest on which they had entered so suddenly. 
I saw that each one of them had come to 
the end of his quest and had found the 
thing for which he had been searching. 
The Frenchman had his equality now. The 
German had doubtless by this time, found 
his God "a mighty fortress." The Belgian 
had won a neutrality which nothing would 
ever invade. 

As I looked on that barnyard of dead, I 
was glad for them that they were dead, and 
not as the men I had seen in the hospital 
wards — the German with his leg being 



142 YOUN(; HILDA AT THE WARS 

sawn offt and the strange bloated face of 
the Belgian: all those maimed and broken 

men condemned to live and carry on the 

living flesh the prank* of shell fire. For 

it mas surely be tier to be lorn to pieces and 

to die than to be sent forth a jest, 



VI 
THE CHEVALIER 

ILDA'S friends in England had 
prepared a "surprise" for her. 
It was engineered by a wise and 
energetic old lady in London, who had 
been charmed with the daring of the 
American girl at the front. So, without 
Hilda's knowledge, she published the 
following advertisement: — 

"'HILDA' — Will every Hilda, big 
and little, in Great Britain and Ireland, 
send contributions for a * Hilda' motor 
ambulance, costing £500, to be sent for 
service in Pervyse, to save wounded 
Belgian soldiers from suffering? It will 
be run by a nurse named Hilda. 'Lady 
Hildas' subscribe a guinea, 'Hildas' over 
sixteen, half-guinea, 'Little Hildas', and 
'Hildas' in straightened circumstances, 
two-shillings-and-sixpence." 



144 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

That was the "Personal" on the front 
page of the London Times, which had 
gone out over the land. 

Hilda's life at the front had appealed 
to the imagination of some thousands 
of the Belgian soldiers, and to many 
officers. The fame of her and of her two 
companions had grown with each week of 
the wearing, perilous service, hard by the 
Belgian trenches. Gradually there had 
drifted out of the marsh-land hints and 
broken bits of the life-saving work of 
these Pervyse girls, all the way back to 
England. The Hildas of the realm had 
rallied, and funds flowed into the London 
office, till a swift commodious car was 
purchased,, and shipped out to the young 
nurse. 

And now Hilda's car had actually come 
to her, there at the dressing-station in 
Pervyse. The brand new motor ambu- 
lance was standing in the roadway, 
waiting her need. Its brown canopy was 
shiny in the sun. A huge Red Cross 



THE CHEVALIER 145 

adorned either side with a crimson splash 
that ought to be visible on a dark night. 
The thirty horse-power engine purred and 
obeyed with the sympathy of a high- 
strung horse. Seats and stretchers inside 
were clean and fresh for stricken men. 
From Hilda's own home town of Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa, had come a friendship's 
garland of one hundred dollars. She 
liked to fancy that this particular sum of 
money had passed into the front wheels, 
where the speed was generated. 

"My car, my very own," she mur- 
mured. She dreamed about it, and 
carried it in her thoughts by day. 
She had fine rushes of feeling about it, 
too. It must do worthy work, she 
said to herself. There could be no 
retreating from bad pockets with that 
car. There must be no leaving the 
wounded, when the firing cuts close, no 
joy-riding. 

She could not help feeling proud of 
her position. There was no other woman 



146 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

out of all America who had won through 
to the front. And on all the Western 
battle-line of four hundred miles, there 
were no other women, save her and her 
two friends, who were doing just this 
sort of dangerous touch-and-go work. 
With her own eyes she had read the 
letters of more than two hundred persons, 
begging permission to join the Corps. 
There were women of title, professional 
men of standing. What had she done 
to deserve such lucky eminence? Why 
was she chosen to serve at the furthest 
outpost where risk and opportunity went 
hand in hand? 

Dr. Neil McDonnell, leader of the 
Ambulance Corps, had brought a party 
of her friends from Furnes, to cele- 
brate the coming of the car. Dr. 
McDonnell was delighted with every 
success achieved by his "children." When 
the three women went to Pervyse, and 
the fame of them spread through the 
Belgian Army, the Doctor was as happy 



THE CHEVALIER 147 

as if a grandchild had won the Derby. 
He was glad when Mrs. Bracher and 
"Scotch" received the purple ribbon and 
the starry silver medal for faithful service 
in a parlous place. He was now very 
happy that Hilda's fame had sprung to 
England, taken root, and bloomed in so 
choice a way. He had a curiously sweet 
nature, the Doctor, a nature without 
animosities, absent-minded, filmed with 
dreams, and those dreams large, bold and 
kindly. 

"Your car is better than a medal," 
he said; "a medal can't save life, but this 
car will. This is as good as an endowed 
hospital bed. It's like the King's touch; 
it heals everyone who comes near. May 
its shadow never grow less." 

"I hope they won't shoot away its 
bonnet," said Hilda; "there's nothing 
so dead-looking as a wrecked ambulance. 
I saw one the other day on the Oest- 
kirke road. It looked like a summer- 
resort place in winter." 



148 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"No danger," replied the Doctor, who 
was of a buoyant cast; "you are born 
lucky. You're one of the Fortunate Seven. 
You know there are Seven Fortunate 
born in each generation. All the good 
things come to them without striving. 
You are one of the Fortunate Seven." 

"We shall see," responded Hilda. 

The Doctor was just starting back to 
Fumes, when he remembered what he 
had come for. 

"By the way," he called to Hilda, 
"what driver do you want?" 

"Smith, of course," she answered. 
"Whom could I want but Smith? He is 
quite the bravest man I have met in the 
twenty weeks out here." 

"He's only a chauffeur," remarked one 
of the Corps. 

"Only a chauffeur," echoed Hilda; 
"only the man who runs the car and 
picks up the wounded, and straps in 
the stretchers. Give me Smith, every 
time — " she ended. 



THE CHEVALIER 149 

"He looks like a hero, doesn't he?" 
said the same member of the Corps. 

"No, he doesn't," laughed Hilda, 
"and that's the joke." 

Smith reported for duty early next 
morning. 

"We must christen the car in some 
real way," she said. "How shall it be, 
Smith?" 

" Dixmude," he answered. He generally 
dealt in replies of one word. He was a 
city lad, slight in frame, of pale, tired face. 

"Yes, there is always work at Dix- 
mude," Hilda agreed. 

They started on the six-mile run. 

"What do you think of using black 
troops against white, miss?" asked Smith, 
after they had bowled along for a few 
minutes. 

"I'm not a warlike person," replied 
Hilda, "so I don't know what's the 
proper thing. But, just the same, I 
don't like to see them using black men. 



150 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

They don't know what they're fighting 
about. Anyway, I'd rather help them, 
than shoot them." 

"It isn't their fault, is it, miss?" said 
Smith. 

"By no means," returned Hilda; "they 
deserve all the more help because they 
are ignorant." 

"That's right enough, too," agreed 
Smith and relapsed into his constitutional 
silence. He had a quiet way with him, 
which was particularly agreeable when 
the outer air was tense. 

They rode on into Dixmude. The 
little city had been torn into shreds, as a 
sail is torn by a hurricane. But the 
ruined place was still treated from time 
to time with shell fire, lest any troops 
should make the charred wreckage a 
cover for advancing toward the enemy 
trenches. They rode on to where they 
caught a flash of soldiers' uniform. 

In a blackened butt of an inn, a group 
of Senegalese were hiding. They were 



THE CHEVALIER 151 

great six-foot fellows, with straight 
bodies, and shoulders for carrying weights 
— the face a black mask, expressionless, 
save for the rolling whites of the eyes, 
and the sudden startling grin of perfect 
white teeth, when trouble fell out of the 
sky. They had been left there to hold the 
furthest outpost. A dozen of them were 
hale and cheery. Two of them sat pa- 
tiently in the straw, nursing each a 
damaged arm. Out in the gutter, fifty 
feet away, one sat picking at his left 
leg. Smith turned the car, half around, 
then backed it toward the ditch, then 
forward again, and so around, till at 
last he had it headed back a»long the 
road they had come. Then he brought 
it to a standstill, leaving the power on, 
so that the frame of the car shook, as 
the body of a hunting dog shakes before 
it is let loose from the leash. 

There was a wail in the air overhead, 
a wail and then a roar, as a shell 
cut close over the hood of the ambu- 



152 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

lance and exploded in the low wall of 
the house opposite. Three more came 
more quickly than one could count 
aloud. 

"Four; a battery of four," said Hilda. 

The enemy artillery had sighted their 
ambulance, and believing it to contain 
reinforcements or ammunition, were level- 
ing their destruction at it. The high 
car with its brown canvas covering was a 
fair mark in the clear morning light. 
Hilda motioned the two wounded men 
in the inn to come to the car. They 
slowly rose to their feet, and patiently 
trudged out into the road. Smith gave 
them a hand, and they climbed upon the 
footboard of the ambulance, and over 
into the interior. One of the black men 
called harshlv to the man in the ditch 
down the road. He turned from his sit- 
ting posture, fell over on his face, and 
then came crawling on his hands and 
knees. 

■\Yhv doesn't he walk?" asked Hilda. 



THE CHEVALIER 153 

"Foot shot away," replied Smith. 

She saw the raw, red flesh of the lower 
leg, as if the work of his maker had been 
left incompleted. Again in the air there 
was the moan of travelling metal, then 
the heavy thud of its impact, the roar 
as it released its explosive, and the 
shower of brick dust, iron and pebbles. 
Again, the following three, sharp and 
close, one on the track of the other. 

"They've got our range all right," said 
Smith. 

The black man, trailing his left leg, 
seemed slow in coming, as he scratched 
along over the ground. This is surely 
death, Hilda said to herself, and she 
felt it would be good to die just so. 
She had not been a very sinful person, 
but she well knew there had been much 
in her way of doing things to be sorry 
for. She had spoken harshly, and acted 
cruelly. She had brought suffering to 
other lives with her charm. And, sud- 
denly in this flash of clear seeing, she 



154 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

knew that by this single act of standing 
there, waiting, she had wiped out the 
wrong-doing, and found forgiveness. She 
knew she could face the dark as blithely 
as if she were going to her bridal. 
Strange how the images of an old- 
fashioned and outgrown religion came 
back upon her in this instant. Strange 
that she should feel this act was bring- 
ing her an atonement and that she 
could meet death without a tremor. The 
gods beyond this gloom were going to 
be good to her, she knew it. They would 
salute Smith and herself, as comrades 
unafraid. 

She was glad, too, that her last sight 
of things would be the look at the 
homely face of Smith, as he stood there 
at his full height, which was always a 
little bent, very much untroubled by 
the passing menace. She did not know 
that there was anyone with whom she 
would rather go down than with the 
ignorant boy, who was holding his life 



THE CHEVALIER 155 

cheap for a crippled black man. Some- 
how, being with him in this hour, con- 
nected her with the past of her own life, 
for, after her fashion, she had tried to be 
true to her idea of equality. She had 
always felt that such as he were worthy 
of the highest things in life. And there 
he stood, proving it. That there was 
nobody beside herself to see him, struck 
her as just a part of the general injustice. 
If he had been a great captain, doing 
this thing, he would go down a memory 
to many. Being an unknown lad of the 
lower class, he would be as little recog- 
nized in his death as in life. It was 
strange what racing and comprehensive 
work her brain compassed in a little 
moment. It painted by flashes and 
crowded its canvas with the figures of 
a life-time. Only those who have not 
lived such a moment, doubt this. 

Then came two more shells, this time 
just in front of the car and low. And 
now the negro, creeping along, had 



156 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

reached the car. Smith and Hilda lifted 
him in, and waved good-bye to the black 
men flattened against the wall of the inn. 
Smith put on power, and they raced to 
the turn of the road. 

There at the cross-roads, on horse- 
back, was Hilda's faithful and gallant 
friend, Commandant Jost, friend of the 
King's. He was using his field-glasses 
on the road down which they had sped. 

"C'est chaud" called Hilda to her old 
friend, "it was lively." 

"Yes," he answered soberly. "I just 
came up in time to see you. I didn't 
know it was you. I have been watching 
your car with my glasses. They nearly 
hit you. I counted ten reports into the 
street where you were." 

"Yes," returned Hilda, "but all's well 
that ends well." 

"How many men did you rescue?" 
asked the Commandant. 

'Three," answered the girl; "the last 
fellow came slowly. His foot was bad." 






THE CHEVALIER 157 

The Commandant dismounted and 
came round to the back of the car. He 
threw up the hood. 

'You did this for black men?" he said 
slowly. 

"Why not?" asked Hilda in surprise. 
"If they're good enough to fight for us, 
they're good enough to save." 

"The King shall know of this," he 
said; "it means a decoration. I will see 
to it." 

Hilda's face lighted up for an instant. 
Then the glow died down; she became 
grave. 

"If anything comes of this," she said 
simply, "it goes to Smith. I must 
insist on that." 

"There is just one thing about it," 
replied the Commandant. "We cannot 
give our decorations around wholesale. 
The King wishes to keep them choice 
by keeping them rare. Now it really 
will not do to add two more decorations 
to your little group. Two of your 



158 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

women have already received them. This 
was a brave piece of work — one of the 
bravest I ever saw. It deserves a ribbon. 
It shall have a ribbon, if I can reach the 
King. But two ribbons, no. It cannot 
be." 

"Ah, you don't need to tell me that," 
returned Hilda. "I know that. One 
decoration is quite enough. But that 
decoration, if granted, must go to 
Smith." 

The highest honor in the gift of the 
King of the Belgians was being con- 
ferred: a Red Cross worker was about 
to be made Chevalier of the Order of 
Leopold. Doubtless one would rather 
be decorated by Albert than by any 
other person in the world. It was plain 
already that he was going down into 
history as one of the fabulous good 
rulers, with Alfred and Saint Louis, who 
had been as noble in their secret heart 
as in their pride of place. It was fitting 



THE CHEVALIER 159 

that the brief ceremony should be held 
in Albert's wrecked village of Pervyse, 
with shell pits in the road, and black 
stumps of ruin for every glance of the 
eye. For he was no King of prosperity, 
fat with the pomp of power. He was a 
man of sorrows, the brother of his cruci- 
fied people. 

But the man who was about to be 
honored kept getting lost. The dis- 
tinguished statesmen, officers, and visit- 
ing English, formed their group and 
chatted. But the object of their coming 
together was seldom in sight. He 
disappeared indoors to feed the wasted 
cat that had lived through three bom- 
bardments and sought her meat in 
wrecked homes. He was blotted out by 
the "Hilda" car, as he tinkered with its 
intimacies. No man ever looked less like 
a Chevalier, than Smith, when discovered 
and conducted to the King. Any of 
the little naval boy officers standing 
around with their gold braid on the 



160 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

purple cloth, looked gaudier than Smith. 
He looked more like a background, with 
his weather-worn khaki, and narrow, 
high-hitched shoulders, than like the 
center-piece in a public performance. 

There came a brief and painful mo- 
ment, when the King's favor was pinned 
upon him. 

"The show is over, isn't it?" he asked. 

Hilda smiled. 

"I suppose you'll go and bury the 
medal in an old trunk in the attic," she 
said. 

Smith walked across to the car, and 
opened the bonnet. The group of dis- 
tinguished people had lost interest in 
him. Hilda followed him over. 

'You're most as proud of that car 
as I am," she said; "it's sort of your 
car, too, isn't it?" 

Smith was burrowing into the interior 
of things, and had already succeeded 
in smearing his fingers with grease within 
three minutes of becoming a Chevalier. 



THE CHEVALIER 161 

"Fact is, ma'am," he answered, "it 
is my car, in a way. You see, my 
mother's name is Hilda, same as yours. 
My mother, she gave half-a-crow T n for 
it." 



WITH THE AMBULANCE 

We were carrying a dead man among the 
living, 

" Take him out and leave him," ordered 
our officer; "it is bad for the wounded men 
riding next to him and under him." 

We lifted him down from his swinging 
'perch in the car. He was heavy at the 
shoulders to shift. The dead seem heavier 
than the quick. We stretched him at full 
length in the sticky mud of the gutter at the 
side of the road. He lay there, white face 
and wide eyes in the night, as if frozen in his 
pain. Soldiers, stumbling to their supper, 
brushed against his stiff body and then 
swerved when they saw the thing which they 
had touched. A group of doctors and officers 
moved away. Mud from the sloughing tires 
of the transports spattered him, but not enough 
to cover him. No one had time to give him 
his resting-place. We were too busy with 



164 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

the fresher shambles, and their incompleted 
products, to pause for a piece of work so 
finished as that cold corpse. 

But no indignity of the roadway can long 
withold him from his portion of peace, and 
the land that awakened his courage will re- 
ceive him at last There is more companion- 
ship under the ground than above it for one 
who has been gallant against odds. 



VII 
THE AMERICAN 

ATROCITIES, rubbish!" said the 
man. "A few drunken soldiers, 
yes. Every war has had them. 
But that's nothing. They're all a bunch 
of crazy children, both sides, and pretty 
soon they'll quiet down. In the mean- 
time," he added with a smile, "we take 
the profits — some of us, that is." 

"Is that all the war means to you?' 3 
asked Hilda. 

"Yes, and to any sensible person," 
replied he. "Why do you want to go 
and get yourself mixed up in it? An 
American belongs out of it. Go and 
work in a settlement at home and let 
the foreign countries stew in their own 
juice." 

"Belgium doesn't seem like a foreign 
country to me," returned the girl. "You 



166 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

see, I know the people. I know young 
Lieutenant Robert de Broqueville and 
Commandant Gilson, with the wound 
on his face, and the boys that come into 
the Flandria Hospital with their fingers 
shot away. They are like members of my 
family. They did something for me." 

"How do you make that out?' 3 

The girl was silent for a moment, 
then she answered: 

"They stood up for what was a mat- 
ter of honor. They made a fight against 
odds. They could have sold out easy 
enough." 

"Well, I don't know," said the man, 
stretching his arms and yawning. 

"No, that's just the trouble with men 
like you. You don't know, and you 
don't care to know. You're all alike; 
you stand aloof or amused. A great 
human wrong has taken place, and you 
say, 'Well, I don't know!'" 

"Just a moment," interrupted the 
man. 



THE AMERICAN 167 

"But I haven't finished," went on the 
girl; "there's another thing I want to 
say. When Belgium made her fight, 
she suffered horrible things. Her women 
and children were mutilated on system, 
as part of a cold policy. Cruelty to the 
unoffending, that is what I mean by 
atrocities." 

"I don't believe you," retorted the 
man. 

"Come and see." 

Hilda, who had run across from Ghent 
to London to stock up on supplies for 
the Corps, was talking with John Hinch- 
cliffe, American banker, broker, finan- 
cier. He was an old-time friend of 
Hilda's family — a young widower, in 
that successful period of early middle- 
age when the hard work and the dirty 
work have availed and the momentum 
of the career maintains itself. In the 
prematurely gray hair, the good-looking 
face, the abrupt speech, he was very 
much American. He was neat — neat 



168 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

in his way of dressing, and in his com- 
pact phrases, as hard and well-rounded 
as a pebble. The world to him was a 
place full of slackers, of lazy good- 
nature, of inefficiency. Into that soft- 
ness he had come with a high explosive 
and an aim. He moved through life as 
a hunter among a covey of tame par- 
tridges — a brief flutter and a tumble 
of soft flesh. He had the cunning lines 
about the mouth, the glint in the eye, 
of the successful man. He had the easy 
generosities, too, of the man who, posses- 
sing much, can express power by endow- 
ing helpless things which he happens to 
like. There was an abundant sentiment 
in him, sentiment about his daughter and 
his flag, and the economic glory of his 
times. He was rather proud of that 
soft spot in his make-up. When men 
spoke of him as hard, he smiled to him- 
self, for there in his consciousness was 
that streak of emotional richness. If he 
were attacked for raiding a trolley sys- 



THE AMERICAN 169 

tern, he felt that his intimates would 
declare, 'You don't know him. Why 
John is a King." 

And, best of all, he had a kind of dim 
vision of how his little daughter would 
come forward at the Day of Judgment, 
if there was anything of the sort, and 
say, "He was the best father in the 
world." 

Hilda and the banker sat quietly, each 
busy in thought with what had been said. 
Then the girl returned to her plea. 

"Come now, Mr. Hinchcliffe," she said, 
"you've challenged every statement I've 
made, and yet you've never once been 
on the ground. I am living there, work- 
ing each day, where things are happen- 
ing. Now, why don't you come and see 
for yourself? It would do you a lot of 
good." 

"I'm over here on business," objected 
the banker. 

"Perfect reply of a true American," 
retorted Hilda, hotly. "Here are three 



170 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

or four nations fighting for your future, 
saving values for your own sons and 
grandsons. And you're too busy to in- 
form yourself as to the rights of it. 
You prefer to sit on the fence and pluck 
the profits. You would just as lief sell 
to the Germans as to the Allies, if the 
money lay that way and no risk." 

''Sure. I did, in September," said 
the banker, with a grin; "shipped 'em 
in by way of Holland." 

"Yes," said Hilda, angrily, "and it 
was dirty money you made." 

"What would you have us do?" asked 
he. "We're not in business for our 

health." 

"I tell you what I'd have you do," 
returned Hilda. "I'd have you find out 
which side was in the right in the biggest 
struggle of the ages. If necessary, I'd 
have you take as much time to inform- 
ing yourself as you'd give to learning 
about a railroad stock which you were 
going to buy. Here's the biggest thing 



THE AMERICAN 171 

that ever was, right in front of you, and 
you don't even know which side is right. 
You can't spare three days to find out 
whether a nation of people is being 
done to death." 

'What next?" asked the banker with 
a smile. "When I have informed my- 
self, what then? Go and sell all that I 
have and give to the poor?" 

"No, I don't ask you to come up to 
the level of the Belgians," answered 
Hilda, "or of the London street boys. 
But what can be asked even of a New 
York banker is that he shall sell to the 
side that is in the right. And when he 
does it, that he shall not make excessive 
profits." 

"Run business by the Golden Rule?" 
"No, not that, but just catch a little 
of the same spirit that is being shown 
by millions of the common people over 
there. Human nature isn't half as self- 
ish and cowardly as men like you make 
out. You'll burn your fingers if you 



172 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

try to put a tag on these peasants and 
shop-assistants and clerks, over here. 
They're not afraid to die. The modern 
man is all right, but you fellows at the 
top don't give him half a chance. A 
whole race of peasants can be burned 
out and mutilated, and it doesn't cause 
a flutter in the pulse-beat of one of you 
American traders." 

"You're a damn poor American," said 
the banker bluntly. 

"You're the poor American," replied 
Hilda. "An uncle of mine, with a few 
'greats' in front of him, was one of the 
three to sign the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence for Connecticut. Another of 
us was in Lincoln's Cabinet. My people 
have helped to make our country. We 
were the ones that welcomed Louis 
Kossuth, and Garibaldi. We are Ameri- 
cans. It's men like you that have weak- 
ened the strain — you and your clever 
tricks and your unbelief. You believe 
in nothing but success. 'Money is 



THE AMERICAN 173 

power,' say you. It is you that don't 
believe in America, not I." 

'What does it all come to?" he broke 
in harshly. "What is it all about? 
You talk heatedly but what are you 
saying? I have given money to the 
Relief Work. I've done something, I've 
got results. Where would you have been 
without money?" 

"Money!" said Hilda. "A thousandth 
part of your makings. And these people 
are giving their life! Why, once or 
twice a day, they are putting themselves 
between wounded men and shell fire. 
You talk about results. There are more 
results in pulling one Belgian out of the 
bloody dust than in your lifetime of 
shaving the market." 

The color came into his face with a rush. 
He was so used to expressing power, sit- 
ting silent and a little grim, and moving 
weaker men to his will, that it was a 
new experience to be talked to by a 
person who quite visibly had vital force. 



174 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

"I used to be afraid of people like you," 
she went on. "But you don't look half 
as big to me now as one of these young 
chauffeurs who take in the wounded 
under shrapnel. You've come to regard 
your directive ability as something sacred. 
You think you can sit in moral judg- 
ment on these people over here — these 
boys that are flinging away their lives 
for the future. Come with me to Bel- 
gium, and find out what they're really 
fighting about." 

Hinchcliffe was used to swift decisions. 

"I'll do it," he said. 

Hilda took him straight to Ghent. 
Then she pushed her inquiries out 
among her Belgian friends. The day 
before, there had been a savage fight at 
Alost. 

"You will find what you want in 
Wetteren Hospital," suggested Monsieur 
Caron, Secretary of the Ghent Red Cross, 
to Hilda. 



THE AMERICAN 175 

"To-morrow, we will go there," she 
said. 

That first evening, she led Hinchcliffe 
through Ghent. In her weeks of work 
there, she had come to love the beautiful 
old town. It was strangely unlike her 
home cities — the brisk prairie "parlor 
city," where she had grown up inch by 
inch, as it extended itself acre by acre, 
and the mad modern city where she had 
struggled for her bread. The tide of 
slaughter was still to the east: a low 
rumble, like surf on a far-away beach. 
Sometimes it came whinnying and licking 
at the very doorstep, and then ebbed 
back, but never rolled up on the ancient 
city. It was only an under-hum to 
merriment. It sharpened the nerve of 
response to whatever passing excellence 
there was in the old streets and vivid 
gardens. Modern cities are portions of a 
world in the making. But Ghent was a 
completed and placid thing, as fair as 
men could fashion it. 



176 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

As evening fell, they two leaned on 
St. Michel's bridge of the River Lys. 
Just under the loiterers, canals that 
wound their way from inland cities to 
the sea were dark and noiseless, as if 
sleep held them. The blunt-nosed boats 
of wide girth that trafficked down those 
calm reaches were as motionless as the 
waters that floated them. Out of the 
upper air, bells from high towers dropped 
their carillon on a population making its 
peace with the ended day. Cathedral 
and churches and belfry were massed 
against the night, cutting it with their 
pinnacles till they entered the region of 
the early stars and the climbing moon. 

Then, when that trance of peace had 
given them the light sadness which ful- 
filled beauty brings, they found it good 
to hasten down the deserted street to 
the cafes and thronging friendly people. 
They knew how to live and take their 
pleasure, those people of Ghent. No 
sullen silence and hasty gorging for them. 



THE AMERICAN 177 

They practised a leisurely dining and 
an eager talk, a zest in the flying 
moment. Their streets were blocked to 
the curb with little round occupied tables. 
Inner rooms were bright with lights and 
friendly with voices. From the silver 
strainer of the "filtered coffee" the hot 
drops fell through to the glass, one by 
one, black and potent. Good coffee, 
and a gay race. 

But those lively people knew in their 
hearts that a doom was on its way, so 
their evenings had the merit of a vanish- 
ing pleasure, a benefit not to be renewed 
with the seasons. Time for the people 
of Ghent carried the grace of last days, 
when everything that is pleasant and 
care-free is almost over, and every greet- 
ing of a comrade is touched with Vale. 
It is the little things that are to be lost, 
so to the little things the time remaining 
is given. It is then one learns that little 
things are the dearest, the light-hearted 
supper in the pleasant cafe with the 



178 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

friend whose talk satisfies, the walk down 
street past familiar windows, the look of 
roofs and steeples dim in the evening 
light. 

"It's different, isn't it?" said the 
banker thoughtfully. 

"Yes," agreed Hilda; "it isn't much 
like Chicago." 

"Think of destroying places like this!" 
went on Hinchcliffe. "Why, they can't 
rebuild them." 

"No," laughed Hilda; "this sort of 
ancestral thing isn't quite in our line." 

"How foolish of them to go to war!" 
continued the banker. When his mind 
once gripped an idea, it carried it through 
to the terminal station. Hilda turned 
on him vigorously. 

"You realize, don't you," she said, 
"that Belgium didn't bring on this war? 
You remember that it was some one else 
that came pouncing down upon her. It 
seems almost a pity, doesn't it, to smash 
this beauty and hunt these nice people?" 



THE AMERICAN 179 

"It's all wrong," he said; "it's all 
wrong." 

Wetteren Hospital — brick walls and 
stone floors, the clatter of wooden shoes 
in the outer corridor, where peasants 
shuffled. In two inner rooms, where 
eleven cots stood, there was a hush, for 
there lay the grievously wounded. Eleven 
peasants they were, men, women, and a 
child. A priest was ministering cheer 
to them, bed by bed. Four Sisters were 
busy and noiseless in service. The priest 
led Hilda and Hinchcliffe to the cot of 
one of the men. The peasant's face was 
pallid, and the cheeks sunken from loss 
of blood. The priest addressed him in 
Flemish, telling him these two were 
friendly visitors, and wished to know 
what had been done to him. Quietly 
and sadly the man in the bed spoke. 
Sentence by sentence the priest trans- 
lated it for Hilda and the banker. On 
Sunday morning, the peasant, Leopold 



180 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

de Man, of Number 90 Hovenier Straat, 
Alost, was hiding in the house of his 
sister, in the cellar. The Germans made 
a fire of the table and chairs in the upper 
room. Then catching sight of Leopold, 
they struck him with the butt of their 
guns, and forced him to pass through 
the fire. Then, taking him outside, they 
struck him to the ground, and gave him 
a blow over the head with a gun stock, 
and a cut of the bayonet which pierced 
his thigh, all the way through. 

Slowly, carefully, he went on with his 
statement: 

"In spite of my wound they make me 
pass between their lines, giving me still 
more blows of the gun-butt in the back, 
in order to make me march. There are 
seventeen or eighteen persons with me. 
They place us in front of their lines and 
menace us with their revolvers, crying 
out that they will make us pay for the 
losses they have suffered at Alost. So, 
we march in front of the troops. 



THE AMERICAN 181 

" When the battle begins, we throw our- 
selves on our faces to the ground, but 
they force us to rise again. At a 
certain moment, when the Germans are 
obliged to retire, we succeed in escaping 
down side streets." 

Hilda was watching Hinchcliffe while 
the peasant and the priest were speak- 
ing. Curiously and sympathetically she 
watched him. A change had come over 
the man: something arrogant had left 
him. Even his voice had changed, as he 
leaned forward and asked, "What does 
he say?" The banker had pulled out a 
black leather note-book, and was taking 
down the translation as the priest gave it. 
Something kindly welled up inside Hilda 
toward him. Something spoke to her 
heart that it was the crust of him that had 
fallen away. She had misjudged him. In 
her swift way she had been unjust. Her 
countryman was not hard, only unseeing. 
Things hadn't been brought to his at- 
tention. She was humbly glad that she 



182 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

had cared to show him where the right 
of things lay. Her fault was greater 
than his. He had only been blind. Dis- 
tance had hidden the truth from him. 
But she had been severe with him to 
his face. She had committed the sin of 
pride, the sin of feeling a spiritual 
superiority. 

"If you please, come to the other side 
of the room," said the priest, leading 
the way to the cot of a peasant, whose 
cheeks had the angry red spot of fever. 
He was Frans Meulebroeck, of Number 
62 Drie Sleutelstraat, Alost. Sometimes 
in loud bursts of terror and suffering, 
and then falling back into a hopeless 
pain-laden monotone, he told his story. 

"They broke open the door of my 
home," he said; "they seized me, and 
knocked me down. In front of my door, 
the corpse of a German lay stretched 
out. The Germans said to me, 'You are 
going to pay for that to us.' A few 
moments later, they gave me a bayonet 



THE AMERICAN 183 

cut in my leg. They sprinkled naphtha 
in my house, and set it afire. My son 
was struck down in the street, and I was 
marched in front of the German troops. 
I do not know even yet the fate of my 
son." 

Gradually as the peasant talked, the 
time of his suffering came upon him. 
His eyes began to see it again in front 
of him. They became fixed and wild, 
the white of them visible. His voice 
was shrill and broken with sobs. 
There was a helpless unresisting agony 
in his tone and the look on his face. 

"My boy!" he said. "I haven't seen 
him." His body shook with sobbing. 

"Enough," said the priest. "Bonne 
chance, comrade; courage." 

In the presence of the priest and of the 
Sister, the two peasants signed each man 
his statement, Leopold firmly, the fe- 
vered Frans making his mark with a 
trembling hand. Hinchcliffe shut his note- 
book and put it back into his pocket. 



184 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

The little group passed into the next 
room, where the wounded women were 
gathered. A Sister led Hilda to the 
bedside of a very old woman, perhaps 
eighty years old. The eyes were closed, 
the thin white hair straggled across the 
pillow. There was no motion to the 
worn-out body, except for faint breathing. 

" Cut through the thigh with a bayo- 
net," said the Sister. 

Hilda stepped away on tiptoe, and 
looked across the ward. There, rising 
out of the bedclothes, was a little head, a 
child's head, crowned with the lightest of 
hair. Gay and vivid it gleamed in that 
room of pain. It was hair of the very 
color of Hilda's own. The child was 
propped up in bed, and half bent over, 
as if she had been broken at the breast- 
bone. It was the attitude of a bent old 
body, weary with age. And yet, the tiny 
oval face of soft coloring, and the bright 
hair, seemed made for happiness. 

Clear across the room, otherwise so 



THE AMERICAN 185 

silent in its patient misery, there came 
a little whistling from the body of the 
child. With each give of the breath, the 
sound was forced out. The wheezing, 
as if the falling breath caught on some 
jagged bit of bone, and struggled for a 
moment to tear itself free, hurt Hilda. 

The face of the little girl was heavy 
with stupor, the eyes half closed. Pain 
had done its utmost, and a partial un- 
consciousnes was spreading over troubled 
mind and tortured body. The final re- 
lease was close at hand. 

Hinchcliffe had stepped up. There 
was an intent look in his face as he 
watched the child. Then the man's ex- 
pression softened. The cunning lines 
about the mouth took on something of 
tenderness. The shrewd, appraising eyes 
lost their glint under a film of tears. 
He went over to the little one, and 
touched her very lightly on the hair. 
It was bright and gay, and incongruous 
on a body that was so visibly dying. 



186 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

It gave a pleasure of sunlight on what 
was doomed. Still she went, on whist- 
ling through her broken body, and with 
each breath she gave a low murmur of 
pain. 

"Sister," said Hilda, to one of the 
women, "what is il with the child? She 
is very ill?" 

"She is dying," said the nurse. 'Her 
hack is slashed open to the bone with 
bayonets. She was placed in front of the 
troops, and they cut her, when she fell 
in fright. " 

"And her breathing?" asked Hilda. 
"I can hear her with each breath." 

"Yes, it is hard with her. Her body 
is torn, and the breath is loud as it 
comes. It will soon be over. She will 
not suffer long." 

Hilda and her companion stepped out 
into the open air, and climbed into the 
waiting motor. The banker was crying 
and swearing softly to himself. 

"The little children who have died, 



THE AMERICAN 187 

what becomes of them?" said Hilda. 
"Will they have a chance to play some- 
where? And the children still in pain, 
here and everywhere in Belgium — will it 
be made up to them? Will a million of 
indemnity give them back their play- 
time? That little girl whom you 
touched — " 

"The hair," he said, "did you see her 
hair? The same color as yours." 

"I know," said Hilda, "I saw myself 
in her place. I feel that I could go out 
and kill." 

"It was the hair," repeated the banker. 
"My little daughter's hair is the color 
of yours. That was why I let you say 
those things to me that evening in 
London. I could not sleep that night 
for thinking of all you said. And when 
I looked across the room just now, I 
thought it was my daughter lying there. 
For a moment, I thought I saw my 
daughter." 



THE BONFIRE 

We were prisoners, together — twenty- 
seven peasants and three of us that had 
been too curious of the enemy 9 s camp. 
We were huddled in the dirt of a field, 
with four sentries over us, and three thou- 
sand soldiers round about us. Just across 
the country road, twenty-six little yellow- 
brick houses were blazing, the homes of the 
peasants of Melle. Each house was a 
separate torch, for they had been carefully 
primed with oil. The light of them, and 
almost the heat, was on our faces. It 
was a clear, warm evening. The fires of 
the cottages burned high. A full moon 
rose blood-red on the horizon, climbed to 
the dome and went across the shy to the 
south-west. Two dogs, chained in the yard 
of a burning house, howled all night. The 
peasant lying next us watched his home 
burn to pieces. It was straight across 



190 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

from us. A soldier came to tell him that 
his wife was wounded but not dead. He 
lay through the night, motionless, and not 
once did he turn his eyes away from the 
blaze of his home. Petrol burns slowly 
and thoroughly. 

In the early morning, soldiers with 
stretchers came marching down the road. 
They turned in at the smouldering cot- 
tages. From the ruins of the little house 
which the peasant had watched so intently, 
three bodies were carried. He broke into 
a long, slow sobbing. 



VIII 
THE WAR BABY 

A BABY?" cried Hilda in amaze- 
ment. 

"A baby, my dear," repeated 
Mrs. Bracher with emphasis. "Come, 
hurry up! We're wanted tout de suite/ 9 

The women had been sitting quite 
peacefully after supper. A jerk at the 
bell cord, a tiny tinkle, and Mrs. Bracher 
had answered the door. A big breath- 
less civilian stood there. He said — 

"Please, the Madame Doctor, quick. 
The baby is coming." 

These astonishing peasants! Hilda 
could never get over her wonder at 
their stolidity, their endless patience, 
their matter-of-fact way of carrying on 
life under a cataclysm. They went on 
with their spading in the fields, while 
shrapnel was pinging. They trotted up 



192 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

and down a road that was pock-marked 
with shell-holes. They hung out their 
washings where machine-gun bullets 
could aerate them. The fierce, early 
weeks of shattering bombardment had 
sent the villagers scurrying for shelter to 
places farther to the west. And for a 
time, Pervyse had been occupied only 
by soldiers and the three nurses. But 
soon the civilians came trickling back. 
They were tired of strange quarters, and 
homesick for their own. There were 
now more than two hundred peasants 
in Pervyse — men, women and children. 
The children, regardless of shell fire, 
scoured the fields for shrapnel bullets 
and bits of shells. They brought their 
findings to the nurses, and received 
pieces of chocolate in return. There 
was a family of five children, in steps, 
who wore bright red hoods. They liked 
to come and be nursed. The women 
had from six to a dozen peasants a day, 
tinkling the bell for treatment. Some 



THE WAR BABY 193 

came out of curiosity. To these was fed 
castor-oil. One dose cured them. They 
came with every sort of ailment. A store- 
keeper, who kept on selling rock candy, 
had a heel that was "bad" from shrap- 
nel. One mite of a boy had his right 
hand burned, and the wound continued 
to suppurate. He dabbled in ditch- 
water, and always returned to Hilda 
with the bandage very wet and dirty. 

Here was their home — Belgium, flow- 
ering and happy, or Belgium, black and 
perishing. Still it is Belgium, the home- 
land. Why take on the ugly hazards of 
exile? 

If your husband is ill and broken, 
you stay by him. He is your man. So 
with the land of your birth, the village 
where you are one with the soil. You 
stay and suffer, and meantime you live. 
Still you plant and plough, though the 
guns are loud in the night, and Les 
Bosches just over the meadow. And 
here was one of these women in the 



194 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

wrecked, charred village of Pervyse carry- 
ing on the great, natural process of life 
as unperturbed as if her home was in a 
valley of peace. 

The three women ran over to a little 
house two hundred yards down the road. 
One wall of it was bullet-chipped, one 
room of it a wreck from a spent obus. 
But, for the rest, it was a livable little 
place, and here was gathered a Flemish 
family. The event was half over, as 
Mrs. Bracher, closely followed by Scotch 
and Hilda, rushed in. The mother, fully 
dressed, was lying on a wooden bed that 
fitted into an alcove. She was typically 
Flemish, of high cheek-bones and very 
red cheeks. The entire family was 
grouped about the bed — a boy of twelve 
years, a girl of nineteen, and a girl of 
three. Attending the case, was a little 
old woman, the grandmother, wearing a 
knitted knobby bonnet, sitting high on 
the top of her head and tied under her 
chin — a conical frame for her pert, dark 



THE WAR BABY 195 

eyes and firm mouth. She was a tiny 
woman, every detail of her in miniature, 
clearly defined, except the heavy, noisy 
wooden shoes. She carried in her per- 
sonality an air of important indignation. 
With the confidence of a lifetime of ob- 
stetrical experience, she drew from her 
pocket a brown string, coarse and dirty, 
and tied up the newcomer's navel. It 
was little the nurses were allowed to 
help. Though a trained and certificated 
midwife, Mrs. Bracher was edged out 
of the ministration by the small, deter- 
mined grandmother, who looked anger 
and scorn out of her little black eyes 
upon the three. She resented their com- 
ing. Antiseptic gauze and hot-water bot- 
tles were as alien as the Germans to her. 
So "Pervyse" entered this world. Noth- 
ing could hold him back, neither shell 
nor bayonets. He had slipped through 
the net of death which men were so 
busily weaving. There he was, a matter 
of fact — a vital, lusty, shapeless fact. 



196 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

To that little creature was given the 
future, and he was stronger than the 
artillery. By all the laws, vibrations of 
fear ought to have passed into the tiny 
body. His consciousness, it would seem, 
must be a nest of horrors. Instead of 
that, his cry had the insistence of 
health. His solemnity was as abysmal 
as that of a child of peace. 

When the girls visited "Pervyse" next 
morning, the grandmother was nursing 
him with sugar and water from a quart 
bottle. She had him dressed in dark 
blue calico. Thereafter twice a day they 
called upon him, and each time Hilda 
carried snowy linen, hoping to win the 
grandmother. But the old lady was firm, 
and "Pervyse" was to thrive, looking 
all the redder, inside blue calico. The 
mother was a good mother, sweet and con- 
stant. Very slowly, the nurses won her 
confidence and the grandmother's respect. 

"Do come away," urged Hilda. "Let 
me take you all back to La Panne, where 



THE WAR BABY 197 

it is safer. Give 'Pervyse' his chance. 
It is senseless to live here in this shed 
under shell fire. Some day, the guns will 
get you, and then it will be too late." 

But always they refused, mother, and 
brother, and big and little sister, and 
grandmother. The village was their place. 
The shed was their home. 

Hilda brought her beautiful big ambu- 
lance to their door. There was room 
enough inside for them all to go to- 
gether, with their bundles of household 
goods. And the mother smiled, saying: 

"The shells will spare me. They will 
not hurt me." 

"You refuse me to-day," replied Hilda, 
"but to-morrow I shall come again to 
take you away. I will take you to a 
new, safe home." 

Very early the next morning, Hilda 
heard the sick crumble that meant the 
crunching of one more dwelling. She 
hurried to the door, and looked down 



198 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

the road. The place of the new birth 
had tumbled, and a thick smoke was 
rising from the wreck. She ran faster 
than she had ever run for her own safety. 
She came to the little home in a ruin of 
plaster and glass and brick-dust. De- 
struction, long overdue, had fallen out 
of the sunny blue sky on the group of 
reckless survivors in that doomed village. 
The soldiers were searching in the smok- 
ing litter for bodies. Big sister and 
little sister and brother were dead, and 
the little old grandmother. The mother, 
with shell wounds at her nursing breasts, 
was dying. Only "Pervyse" was living 
and to live. By a miracle of selection, 
he lay in the wreck of his house and 
the grave of his people — one foot half 
off, but otherwise a survivor of the shell 
that had fallen and burst inside his 
home. 

Swiftly Hilda in her car, carried mother 
and child to La Panne to the great 
military hospital. The mother died in 



THE WAR BABY 199 

two hours on the operating table, and 
"Pervyse" was alone in a world at war. 

The story and fame of him spread 
through the last city left to the Belgians. 
All the rest of their good land was 
trampled by the alien and marred by 
shell-fire and petrol. Here, alone in 
Flanders, there was still music in the 
streets, even if it was often a dead 
march. And here life was still normal 
and orderly. "Pervyse" found shelter 
in the military hospital where his mother 
had come only to die. He was the 
youngest wounded Belgian in all the 
wards. They put him in a private room 
with a famous English Colonel, and 
they called the two "Big Tom" and 
"Little Tom." The blue calico was 
changed for white things and "Pervyse" 
had a deep, soft cradle and more visitors 
than he cared to see. 

The days of his danger and flight were 
evil days in Pervyse, for the guns grew 



200 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

busier and more deadly. There came 
a last day for the famous little dressing- 
station of the women. It began with 
trouble at the trenches. Two boys of 
nineteen years were brought in to the 
nurses. One of them was carrying the 
brains of a dead comrade on his pocket. 
A shell had burst in their trench, giving 
them head wounds. They died in the 
hall. They had served two days at 
the front. The women placed them on 
stretchers in the kitchen, and covered 
their faces, and left them in peace. A 
brief peace, for a shell found the kitchen, 
and the blue fumes of it puffed into the 
room where the women were sitting. 
The orderly and four soldier friends 
came running in, holding their eyes. 
When Hilda entered the kitchen, she 
saw that the shell had hit just above 
those quiet bodies, bringing the rafters 
and glass and brick upon them. A 
beam, from the rafter, had been driven 
into the breast of one of the boys — 



THE WAR BABY 201 

transfixing him as if by a lance. Shells 
were breaking in the road, the garden, 
the field and the near-by houses, every 
five seconds. In her own house, bricks 
were strewn about, and the windows 
smashed in. A large hole, in a shed 
back of the house, marked the flight of 
a shell, and behind it lay a dead man 
who had taken refuge there. 

A Belgian had driven up their car a 
moment before and it was standing at 
the door. One soldier started to the 
car — a shell drove him back — a second 
dash and he made it, turned the car, 
and the women darted in. They sped 
down the road to the edge of the village, 
and here the nurses found shelter. Later 
that day the Colonel handed them a 
written order to evacuate Pervyse, lent 
them men to help, and gave them twenty 
minutes in which to pack and depart. 
They returned to their smashed house, 
and piled out their household goods. 
They left in the ambulance with all 



m YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

the soldiers cheering them. They were 
a sad little lot. So the loyal four 
months of service were ended under a 
few hours of gun-fire, and Hilda and 
her friends had to follow "Pcrvysc" 
to his new home. 

As she went down the road, she took 
one last look at the shattered place. No 
house in her earthly history had con- 
cm I nil ed so many memories. There she 
bad put off the care-free girl, and 
achieved her womanhood, as if at a 
stroke. There she and her friends had 
healed a thousand soldiers. They had 
welcomed the Queen, princes, generals, 
brave officers soon to die, famous artists 
under arms, laughing peasant soldiers, 
the great and the obscure, such a society 
gathered under the vast pressure of a 
world-war as had seldom graced the 
"At-Homes" of an Iowa girl. There she 
had won fame, and a dearer thing yet, 
honor, which needs not to be known in 
order to shed its lonely comfort. She 



THE WAR BABY 203 

was leaving it all, forever, in that heap 
of plaster and crumbling brick. 

She had rarely had him out of mind 
since that experience in Wetteren Con- 
vent, when they two had visited the little 
girl who lay dying of her bayonet wounds. 
But it was a full five months since she 
had seen him. 

"I had to come back," said Hinch- 
cliffe; "New York seemed out of it. I 
know there is work for me here — some 
little thing I can do to help you all. 

"What luck?" he added. 

"A shell has been following me 
around," replied Hilda. "So far, it has 
aways called too late, or missed me by 
a few feet of masonry. But it's on my 
trail. It took the windows out of my 
room at a doctor's house in Furnes. 
Later on, it went clean through my little 
room up over a tailor's shop. In Pervyse 
we had our Poste de Secours in the 
Burgomaster's house. One morning we 



204 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

had stepped out for a little air — we 
were a couple of hundred yards down 
the road — when a big shell broke in the 
house. And now our last home in Per- 
vyse is blown to pieces. Luck is good 
to me." 

Hinchcliffe took his place, and a strong 
place it was, in the strange life of La 
Panne. A word from him smoothed out 
tangles. The Etat Major approved of 
him. He was twice arrested as a spy, 
and enjoyed the experience hugely. At 
one time, there was a deficiency of tires 
of the right make, and he put a rush 
order clear across the Atlantic and had 
the consignment over in record time. 
He cut through the red tape of the trans- 
port service, red tape that had been 
annoying even the established hospitals. 
He imported comforts for the helpers. 
There was a special brand of tea which 
the English nurses were missing. So 
there was nothing for it, but his London 
agent must accompany the lot in person 



THE WAR BABY 205 

to La Panne. There was something rest- 
less, consuming, in his activity. 

fc Your maternity hospital is a great 
idea," said Hinchcliffe to Hilda, during 
one of their talks. "I've cabled for 
five thousand pounds. That will start 
things." 

The maternity hospital had been sug- 
gested to Hilda by the plight of little 
"Pervyse," and the hundreds of other 
babies of the war whom she had seen, 
and the hapless peasant mothers. Mili- 
tary hospitals are for soldiers, not for 
expectant mothers or orphaned children, 
and "Pervyse's" days of glory were end- 
ing. Reluctantly Colonel Depage, head 
surgeon of the hospital, had told Hilda 
that "Pervyse" must seek another home. 
His room was needed for fighting men. 

"Let me have him christened first?" 
asked Hilda, and the great Belgian phy- 
sician had consented. 

It took her a week to make ready the 
ritual, but the morning came at last. 



206 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

" To-day we christen 'Pervyse,' 5 said 
Hilda to the banker. 'Will you come?' 3 

"It isn't just my sort of speciality," 
replied Hinchcliffe, 'but of course I'll 
come, if you'll show me the moves." 

Hilda had chosen for the ceremony a 
village church on the Dixmude road. 
They put all the little necessary bundles 
of baby life into Hilda's ambulance — a 
packet of little shawls, and intimate 
clothing, a basket of things to eat, a 
great christening cake, frosted by Dun- 
kirk's leading confectioner, a can of 
chocolate and of cream, candy baskets of 
sweets. It was Sunday — a cloudless, 
innocent day. They dodged through 
Furnes, the ruined, and came at length 
to the village of their quest. They 
entered the convent, and found a neat, 
clean room of eight beds. Two babies 
had arrived. Six mothers were expec- 
tant. In charge of the room was a red- 
cheeked, black-eyed nurse, a Flemish 
girl, motherly with the babies. Hilda 



THE WAR BABY 207 

dressed "Pervyse" in a long, white, 
immaculate dress, and a gossamer shawl, 
and pinned upon him a gold pin. She 
set the table in the convent — the cake 
in the center of the table, with one 
candle, and snowy blossoms from a plum 
tree. 

Then the party started for the church: 
fifteen-year-old Rene, the Belgian boy 
scout who was to serve as godfather, 
giggling; the apple-cheeked Flemish girl 
carrying "Pervyse"; Hilda and Hinch- 
cliffe closely following. They walked 
through the village street past laughing 
soldiers who called out, " Les Anglais!" 
They entered the church through the 
left door. A puff of damp air blew into 
their faces. In the chancel stood a stack 
of soldiers' bicycles. They kneeled and 
waited for the Cure. In the nave, old 
peasant women were nodding and dip- 
ping, and telling their beads. The nurse 
handed the baby to Hilda. Rene giggled. 
Three small children wandered near and 



208 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

stared. On the right side of the church 
was heaped a bundle of straw, and three 
rosy soldiers emerged who had been 
sleeping there. They winked at the 
pretty Flemish nurse. The church for 
them was a resting-place, between trench 
service. 

The old Cure entered with his young 
assistant. The youth was dudish, with 
a business suit, and a very high, straight 
collar that struck his chin. The Cure 
was in long, black robes, with skirts — 
a yellow man, gray-haired, his mouth a 
thin, straight slit, almost toothless. His 
eyebrows turned up, as if the face were 
being pulled. His heavy ears lay back 
against his head, large wads of cotton- 
wool in them. He talked with the 
nurse, inquiring for the baby's name. 
There were a half-dozen names for the 
mite — family names of father and 
mother, so that there might be a sur- 
vival of lines once so numerous. Rene's 
name, too, was affixed. The Cure wrote 



THE WAR BABY 209 

the names down on a slip of paper, and 
inserted it in his prayer-book. The serv- 
ice proceeded in Latin and Flemish. 

Then "Pervyse" was carried, behind 
the bicycles, to a small room, with the 
font. Holy water was poured into a 
bowl. The old priest, muttering, put 
his thumb into the water, and then be- 
hind each ear of the baby, and at the 
nape of the neck. At the touch on the 
neck "Pervyse" howled. The priest's 
hand shook, so that he jabbed the wrong 
place, and repeated the stroke. Then 
the thumb was dipped again, and crossed 
on the forehead, then touched on the 
nose and eyes and chin. Between the 
dippings, the aged man read from his 
book, and the assistant responded. To 
Hinchcliffe, standing at a little distance, 
the group made a strange picture — 
"Pervyse" wriggling and sometimes 
weeping; Hilda "Shsh, Shysh, Shshing"; 
Rene nudging the Flemish girl, and gig- 
gling; the soldiers peeping from the 



210 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

straw: the children, attracted by the 

outcries of "Pervyse," drawing closer; 
aged worshippers continuing their dron- 
ing. "IVrvvse" was held direetly over 
the bowl and the slightly warmed water 
descended on him in volume. At this 
he shouted with anger. His head was 
dried and his white hood elapped on. 
He was borne to another room where 
from a cupboard the Cure took down the 
sacred pictures, and put them over the 
child's neck. Kene sat on the small 
stove in the corner of the room, and it 
caved in with a clatter of iron. But no 
side-issue could mar the ceremony which 
was now complete. 'Pervyse" had a 
name and a religion. 

Then it was back again to the convent 
for the cake, inviting the good old Cure 
to be one of the christening party. 
"Pervyse," his hand guided, cut the 
christening cake. The candle was lighted. 

As the christening party sped home- 
ward to La Panne, Hilda looked back. 



THE WAR BABY 211 

High overhead on the tower of the 
church, two soldiers and two officers 
with field glasses were stationed, sig- 
nalling to their field battery. 

Without a mishap, they had returned 
to the military hospital, and "Pervyse," 
thoroughly awakened by the ceremony, 
had been restored to his white crib. 
To soften his mood, his bottle of supper 
had been handed to him a little ahead of 
time. But, unwilling to lay aside the 
prominence which had been his, all day, 
he brandished the bottle as if it were a 
weapon instead of a soporific. 

"A pretty little service," said Hilda, 
"but there was something pathetic to it. 
The little kid looked so lonely in the 
damp old church. And no one there 
that really belonged to him. And to- 
morrow or the next day or some day, 
they'll get the range of this place, and 
then little "Pervyse" will join his mother 
and his brother and sisters. With us 



212 YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 

older ones, it doesn't so much matter. 
We've had our bit of walk and talk and 
so good-by. But with a child it's dif- 
ferent. All that love and pain for noth- 
ing. One more false start." 

"By God, no!" said Hinchcliffe. "'Per- 
vyse' shall have his chance, the best 
chance a kid ever had. I've got to get 
back to America. There'll be a smash 
if I don't. I'm a month late on the job, 
as it is. But 'Pervyse' goes with me. 
Little Belgium is going to get his chance." 

"You mean — " said Hilda. 

"Certainly, I do," replied the banker. 
"I mean that we're going to bring that 
kid up as good as if war was a dream. 
We're going to make him glad he's alive. 
He's going back to America with me. 
Will you come?" 

"Why," said Hilda, her eyes filling, 
"what do you mean?" 

"I mean that I need you. Show me 
how to put this thing, that we've been 
doing here, into New York. It's a dif- 



THE WAR BABY 213 

ferent world after the war. You have 
often said it. America mustn't be be- 
hind. I want to catch up with these 
Red Cross chauffeurs. I want our crowd 
in Wall Street to be in on the fun. Come 
on and help." 

"I don't know what to say," began 
Hilda. "I shall miss you so. The boys 
in the ward will miss you, the babies will 
miss you." She laughed. "I can't come 
just now. There is so much work, and 
worse ahead." 

"Later, you will come?" he pleaded. 
He turned to the child who was wielding 
his bottle as a hammer on the foot of the 
bed, and lifted him shoulder high. 

"Remember," he said, as the bottle 
was thumped on his head, "'Pervyse' 
and I will be waiting." 

The bottle fell on the floor, and the 
outraged glass splintered, and "Pervyse's" 
supper went trickling down the cracks. 

"You see," said the banker, "we are 
helpless without you." 



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